Churchmen 



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David M.Steele 



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By David M. Sieete 



Going Abroad Overland 
Vacation Journeys, East and West 
Addresses and Sermons to Students 
Papers and Essays for Churchmen 



PAPERS and ESSAYS 
for CHURCHMEN 

Being a Series of Studies on Topics 
Made Timely by Ciirrent Events 



By 

David M. Steele 

Rector of the Church of St. Luke and the Epiphany 
Philadelphia 

Author of 

"Going Abroad Overland," "Vacation Journeys" and 
"Addresses and Sermons to Students" 



" Thou hast most traitorously corrupted the youth of 
the realm in erecting a grammar-school; and whereas, be- 
fore, our forefathers had no other books but the score and 
the tally, thou hast caused printing to be used, and, con- 
trary to the king, his crown and dignity, thou hast built a 
paper-mill." 

Shakespeare, Henry VI. 



PHILADELPHIA 

GEORGE W. JACOBS & CO. 

PUBLISHERS 

1919 






Copyright, 1919 

BY 

DAVID M. STEELE 



viAN -8 1920 



©aA559y4n 



f>^V \ 






FOREWORD 

The dozen chapters comprised in this volume are 
arranged without regard to sequence. Originally, 
they were papers or articles each prepared for some 
special occasion. They have this to hold them in 
conjunction: they were all written to be read either 
to or by Churchmen. Their varying dates of com- 
position range back over several years. They are 
intimate discussions of themes that current events 
made timely. For this reason, interest in them may 
be thought to be ephemeral. But numerous hearers 
and readers have asked that, in their form, they 
might be made more permanent by being thus bound 
up together. ' I have set them forth in this book 
form reluctantly because I know how much discus- 
sion they provoked, each for some reason of its own. 
Yet perhaps the very boldness which presents them 
for more careful scrutiny may win for them a circle, 
each their own, of friends who come to know them 
better by more calm perusal. This at least I know : 
" A decent boldness ever meets with friends." 

D. M. S. 

Philadelphia, Pa. 
Christmas, 19 19. 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTER PAGE 

I. — Effect of the War on Religion . . lo 

II. — Wanted, an American Sunday ... 27 

III. — Woman Suffrage and Religion . . 60 

IV. — Men's Clubs and the Churches . . 84 

V. — The Poor, with You Always . . . 106 

VI. — The Church and Labor Agitation . 122 

VII. — Socialism — Christian and Pagan . 145 

VIII. — Revelation — Final or Progressive . 162 

IX. — The Episcopal Church 180 

X. — Change of Name of the Church . . 195 
XI. — Proportionate Representation . . 220 



CHAPTER I 

EFFECT OF THE WAR ON RELIGION 

Chapel o£ Union Seminary, New York. 

Originally a Sermon but Rewritten for the 
Pages of The Churchman. 

FROM a recent editorial, I clip the follow- 
ing sentences : " One of the happy con- 
sequences of peace is the privilege re- 
stored to the churches of preaching the 
Gospel once more. Now that victory has been com- 
pletely celebrated and our allies each felicitated on 
their part in the great consummation, the clergy can 
get back to their normal task of teaching religion. 
There have been some thrilling war sermons dur- 
ing the past four and a half years. The theme has 
been a moving one. But, after all, it has been easy 
to preach war sermons; it is always difficult to 
preach religion." In the opinion of some, this is 
going to be more difficult after than before the war. 
Is it really? This inquiry prompts me to. make the 
following study. 



EFFECT OF THE WAR ON RELIGION 

". . . and the God of peace shall be with you." 

Philippians 4 : 9. 

What is the Effect of the War, to date, upon 
Religion? As one begins to search for answer to 
this question, the first thing that impresses one is 
the novel order of the terms. At the outset, all 
were asking what effect religion had, in all the cen- 
turies, had upon war. The answer was, apparently 
none. There was much talk of Christianity's fail- 
ure; of the breakdown of Religion; of the proven 
impotency of the Church. Now, at the end of a 
wid^ circuit, we are coming round to something 
quite the opposite. Men have stopped complaining 
in that former manner. They are now inquiring: 
What has the War done, or what is it going to do, to 
the Church? 

By this use of the words Church and Religion, I 
would not be understood as using two things inter- 
changeably. They are not identical. They are not 
even synonymous. Religion is an original neces- 
sity; the Church is only a derivative necessity. The 



EFFECT OF THE WAR ON RELIGION ii 

former is inner, instinctive, abiding; the latter is 
outer, objective, ephemeral. The first is the same in 
all humans, if only one can get down to it, beneath 
its habiliments, sometimes even its cerements; the 
second is forever changing its essence, taking on new 
appearances and throwing off old excrescences. In 
other words, Religion is one — as the sea; the 
Church is many — as the waves. 

All profitable study of this subject, therefore, 
must begin by utterly ignoring such distinctions as 
those between creeds and cults and sects; all those 
manifold denominational divisions. And by this 
I mean all those divisions, both minor and major. 
There is no essential difference even between those 
two great halves of Christendom, Protestant and 
Catholic. Aye, far beyond this, at the end of two 
millenniums, in a way never known since the far-off 
beginning, " There is neither Greek nor Jew, cir- 
cumcision nor uncircumcision, Barbarian, Scythian, 
bond nor free : but Christ is all, and in all." 

There is a new feeling of fraternity, the world 
throughout as well as our own land within. There 
is a new congeries of human beings, merely because 
they are human. All are human; ergo, all are ca- 
pable of becoming divine. That is to say, either all 



12 PAPERS AND ESSAYS FOR CHURCHMEN 

are or else none are. Either all may stand or all 
will fall. Either light is now upon us or gross 
darkness. Either we are facing blank negation or 
new affirmation. Either we shall soon be plunged 
into materialism, stolid, crass, barbaric, primitive; 
or we will recognize ourselves anew as, all together, 
bound with golden chains about the feet of God. 

This is what the War has done in every other 
way one looks upon it. In the beginning, it was a 
European conflict; it soon passed to the stage of a 
world-revolution. At first, it was a mere feud be- 
tween peoples; at the last, it was an issue between 
two ideals. It began as an international contro- 
versy; it became a world-wide conflagration. And 
that burning still goes on. In it, all that is tinsel is 
bound to be charred. In that seething caldron, all 
the elements are molten. Now that they have set 
about to cool, two things are seen to harden in forms 
that they never had before. Politically, there ap- 
pears about to emerge one International State; re- 
ligiously, there must emerge — if it is to emerge 
at all — one truly Catholic Church. 

But with regard to this '' Church " in formation, 
all earnest people are at present more concerned over 
its function than its form; over its essence than its. 



EFFFCT OF THE WAR ON RELIGION 13 

externals ; over its religion than its ritual. It is the 
life within that will give ultimately new shape to 
the outward body. What are some of the agencies 
that, up to date, have been at work most potently? 
What of certain individuals? And what of certain 
institutions ? 

I believe that all are working together to bring 
forth a new enthusiasm for religion, although some, 
and may be all, are doing this unconsciously. One- 
half of the Church is going to be improved by the 
War, in that its members will be better Catholics. 
But they will probably be poorer Romanists. The 
Italian, the French, even the American Catholics, 
will be better religionists but poorer papists. This 
is for a dozen reasons, each peculiar to that many 
peoples recently at war with an alliance — that of 
Mittel Europa — which the Vatican never specifi- 
cally denounced. 

The effect of the War upon all Roman Catholics 
is not easy to foretell. On the one hand, there has 
been in France an amazing outburst of good will 
toward that Church — as it is in France. The old 
suspicion and antagonism have been blotted out in 
the common blood of priest and poilu. The fact of 
both in uniform, fighting and dying side by side, 



14 PAPERS AND ESSAYS FOR CHURCHMEN 

has brought thousands to kneel at the masses cele- 
brated in the trenches, by a fellow soldier in priestly 
stole, who never before bent the knee in worship. 
Toward the Catholic Church — in France — men 
are more friendly than they have been for a cen- 
tury. 

But for the Church of Rome the soldiers of all 
nations of the Allies have only suspicion, disappoint- 
ment and anger. They are keenly alive to the fact 
that, in more than four years, there came from the 
Vatican no single word of denunciation or even re- 
proof for the atrocities committed by the Germans. 
They take as their own the pathetic and brave words 
of Cardinal Mercier upon the matter — such words 
as no Cardinal has used to a Pope for four centuries. 
They see that, in all the deliverances from Rome, the 
Central and the Entente Powers have all that time 
been ranged in the same moral category. They re- 
call that, at the very moment when the saintly Car- 
dinal was issuing his protest, the Papal Nuncio was 
being entertained as guest of Bissing, the Belgian 
Military Governor. They remember that, in 191 5, 
on Emperor William's birthday, an official Te Deum 
was sung in Rome, twelve Cardinals — including 
the Papal Secretary — assisting at the ceremony. 



EFFECT OF THE WAR ON RELIGION 15 

These things make it doubtful as to what their atti- 
tude toward this Church will be hereafter. 

However, I set out to make other distinctions. I 
would make attempt to see some other things in 
right perspective. Among all who have served the 
men at war, from the point of view specifically of 
the men's religious needs, I think the most important 
were the '' Padres.'' The best chaplains, in my 
judgment, were the priests. This was because they, 
more nearly than others, had a recognized function. 
They were able to stick to their job. Among the 
Protestants, so I am told, there was pathetic lack, 
not only of co-operation but of any clear conception 
of their simplest raison d'etre. They went — none 
will deny this — with the highest motives. They 
began with the attempt to minister to human souls ; 
but they found no machinery for that administration 
they had been accustomed to. They ended there- 
fore by feeding human bodies and censoring mail. 
They were without a mission, who did not take one 
along. They were feeble, both in effort and accom- 
plishment, because there were too many of them. 

Between these, stands the Y. M. C. A. It has 
the advantage of its limitations; but it has the de- 
fects of its virtues. It has done a marvelous work. 



i6 PAPERS AND ESSAYS FOR CHURCHMEN 

t 

But it has nothing to do with our subject. I admit 
that work done by a secretary is work there is need 
for. I am only saying it is not religious work. It 
is more important ? May be. That is a point ; but 
it is not my point. This Association has rendered 
service by all odds the best — of the kind that it 
rendered. But its religion is the worst — where it 
still essays at all its former modes of worship ; where 
it still drools its erstwhile puerile evangel. All I 
note is that the Y. M. C. A. has nothing to bring 
home as contribution to the making of the Church 
that is to be, when that fair fane comes to be builded 
which shall house the souls of men. 

Far other and far larger movements are at work 
in this direction. We have changed so as a people, 
in this past year and a half, that we are scarcely 
recognizable. We have become serious, who had 
been flippant. We are sacrificial, who had been 
self-seeking. We are humble, who had been self- 
satisfied. We are modest, who were arrogant and 
boastful. We are generous who had been greedy; 
economical who had been spend-thrift; charitable 
who were in danger of becoming penurious. We 
are growing industrious almost and fairly honest. 
We are patient under restraint, benevolent to the 



EFFECT OF THE WAR ON RELIGION 17 

measure of hundreds of millions and patriotic to the 
scale of a score or more billions of dollars. 

If, only a little more than one short year ago, 
anyone had foretold what has come about, he would 
have been as little believed, yet as nearly correct, 
as the proverbial prophet in his own country. If 
he had predicted that a draft bill would be passed 
practically without protest and that what amounts 
to universal military service would be entered upon 
with a cheer; that a hundred army cantonments 
should become suddenly restricted areas and that 
four million men who donned the khaki should prove 
overnight so nearly models of integrity and virtue; 
that proficiency should transport two millions of 
these splendid fellows overseas without one dread 
catastrophe; that a hundred million population 
would willingly submit to rationing of food stuffs, 
while as yet our own national larder was full ; that 
labor slackers would rise to such fine endeavor as to 
launch one hundred ships on one Fourth of July; 
that the vagaries of Feminism would be forgotten 
in enthusiasm for the Red Cross; that our parish 
houses, our libraries and exclusive clubs would be 
made places of friendly and sympathetic intercourse 
with sailors and marines; that the platforms in 



i8 PAPERS AND ESSAYS FOR CHURCHMEN 

moving-picture places would be made the hustings 
for Four Minute Men and that dance-halls and pool- 
rooms would be emptied by the simple order, Fight 
or Work — who could have believed it? I never 
wanted less to be facetious; but I never wanted 
more to say that we have '' got religion/' 

For here come we to a definition. I have drawn 
the line between Religion and the Church; just what 
then is Religion ? We are likely to seek answer in 
fields far away because our eyes are blinded by 
things near at hand. We are like the rustic who 
complained he could not see the forest for the trees. 
Read this terse passage from St. Paul's Epistle and 
reflect how the enumeration is that of the paragraph 
above : "' Whatsoever things are true, whatsoever 
things are honest, whatsoever things are just, what- 
soever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, 
whatsoever things are of good report . . . these do : 
and the God of peace shall be with you.'' 

The God of peace ! That is a strange appellation, 
when He has seemed to be more nearly the God of 
war? But is it not conceivable that He should be 
both? Here is a fact, beyond any dispute. And 
this fact, once frankly admitted, puts to silence all 
who quibble over Christianity's supposed break- 



EFFECT OF THE WAR ON RELIGION 19 

down in the recent crisis. Admit this, and you have 
the defense of Christ and the Gospels from the 
charge of Pacifism. The New Testament does not 
teach peace at any price; it teaches righteousness at 
any cost. The assertion that there never was a good 
war or a bad peace is pernicious, sordid, and untrue. 
Where there is Hfe there is movement. Where 
there is movement there is progress. Where there 
is progress there is growth. Where there is growth 
there is pain. Where there is birth there are birth 
pangs. But where there is birth of this kind, it is 
birth into life. And ^'God is not the God of the 
dead but the God of the living." 

The truth is, the most important thing this war 
has done has been to dissipate a mass of emotional 
vapors which had for a good while been gathering 
about the idea of religion. It has compelled many 
to think clearly who never thought clearly before. 
An utterly immoral emotionalism had enveloped, 
like a fog, for half a century, the heads of many 
people in this land of ours. The shock of guns has 
scattered this mist. Thousands who under this in- 
fluence had been thinking of Christ as a pallid, sen- 
timental figure in an unreal world have suddenly 
come to realize in Him the personification of right- 



20 PAPERS AND ESSAYS FOR CHURCHMEN 

> ' ■ 

eousness as well as of love. The real force begins 
to be seen of the command to " Love thy neighbor 
as thyself/' 

Love my neighbor as myself? Precisely; no less 
and no more. If I dare not love myself while I am 
deservedly hateful, no more dare I love my neighbor 
while he is hateful. If I must discipline myself, 
even by scourging if needful, so I must deal with 
my neighbor. The Pacifist loves himself unre- 
servedly. That is the reason he can so easily love 
his neighbor without any regard to moral desert. 
His affection for himself is of that same ill charac- 
ter. He can do this. But nobody else can. Cer- 
tainly no Christian can. 

The necessities of war have shown not only the 
unworthy place these people hold in the social order, 
but also it has made evident the shallowness and 
peril of their religious attitude. For two genera- 
tions this sort of folk have been multiplying. These 
are they who refuse to see crime in the criminal, 
laziness in poverty, selfishness in the trade union, 
self-indulgence in the debauche. Is it any wonder 
that, in war, they could see only madness and crimi- 
nality; that they could not see the righteousness of 
its object or the weight of its moral compulsion? 



EFFECT OF THE WAR ON RELIGION 21 

It is certainly a gain for true religion to have shown, 
to themselves and to the world, the feeble selfishness 
of these people and the fallacy of what they have 
been pluming themselves upon as their peculiar 
virtue. 

This the war has effectively done. The majority 
of them will leave these ranks and range themselves 
among those who see things as they are : who see 
that sin is sin ; that it is something to be hated and 
not misfortune to be coddled; that righteousness, 
and not peace, exalteth a nation; that war upon a 
people which makes violence its god and cruelty its 
companion is always a religious duty and not a re- 
version to savagery. It will be immeasurable gain 
if the War has sifted out and set apart, in impotent 
isolation, that small class who still call themselves 
idealists because they have no clear ideal ; who love 
all men so much that they do not love any man well ; 
who place peace above righteousness and who would 
have all men comfortable, regardless of their moral 
desert. 

Thus we have learned, and fully I believe, the de- 
fence of Christ and the Gospel against this charge, 
or shall I say this claim? These years have cured 
of their obsession those who reasoned falsely here 



22 PAPERS AND ESSAYS FOR CHURCHMEN 

from faulty premises. And this has tended to the 
strengthening of real religion. The minority of 
this group consisted of devoted zealots who regarded 
peace as a final blessing. They considered it an ob- 
ject so transcendent that it must be striven for even 
at the cost of national honor. Such a belief ren- 
dered its victims insensible to moral considerations 
and impervious to the influences which govern nor- 
mal men. The majority of them made pacifism a 
screen for cowardice, for indifference and for greed. 
Peace-at-any-price was their motto; anything to 
prevent war in the future is still their endeavor. 
But others have come to see, for the most part, that 
this is mere selfishness. They of whom I speak 
looked for consolation in religion. I am glad they 
did not find it. If they had, it would have proven 
the death of religion. But religion is not dead in 
this connection. It is vibrant with new life. Its 
tone is resonant with the words of the Master. In 
every conflict between right and wrong, in every 
sharp issue between good and evil, whenever the 
powers of Hell are ranged against the throne of 
Heaven, we hear Him cry: ''I came not to send 
peace on earth but a sword." 

One other thing, this not so much a form of ir- 



EFFECT OF THE WAR ON RELIGION 23 

religion as a strange perversion of or substitute for 
right religion, that was threatening at the War's out- 
set was the spread of Socialism. The futility and 
fallacy of this the past four years have made ap- 
parent. Those who were coquetting with it then 
have learned their lesson. Much of the Russian 
tragedy was due to Americans, of a sort; that is, to 
those pseudo-Americans, to Russo-Americans who 
returned there in great numbers after the Revolu- 
tion, each with his soap-box, and began to talk — 
defaming America as a land of capitalists, etc. One 
feels very strongly at times against these people. 
Then one realizes that they have never seen or 
known the real America we know and love. They 
were the denizens of our slums and the product of 
injustice in our economic system. We realize that, 
in the future, America must breed a different type 
from her immigrants; that we must not allow the 
forces to work longer that produce this type. This 
will be corrected. It is being done; but by those 
who now denounce instead of taking seriously those 
of whom, says St. Paul, " I have told you often, 
and now tell you even weeping, that they are the 
enemies of the cross of Christ: Whose end is de- 
3truction, whose God is their belly, and whose glory 



24 PAPERS AND ESSAYS FOR CHURCHMEN 

is in their shame, who mind earthly things." 
And, finally, one other sad reflection on the low 
state of Religion at the outset of the War we have 
long since removed. It was in the ease and comfort 
we had come to overprize because of the amazing 
wealth heaped up in this country during the last 
quarter of a century. The group who had quickly 
amassed this wealth had grown, not so much sordid 
as silly. They were not villainous; they were 
morally flabby. They were quite as unreligious as 
they were unpatriotic — and for the same reason. 
They cared for their country, or anything else, only 
insofar as it promoted their personal interests and 
afiforded them conditions under which they could 
grow richer. Why should they take time from 
business to perform a citizen's duties ? Why should 
they love their neighbor as themselves — which is 
the essence of religion? What they were short of 
was imagination. The world-war has stirred them 
to idealism. This was all they needed. They sti 
out in search of something and they found — their 
souls. This is clear gain, both to them and to others. 
They have merely learned that elemental axiom of 
true religion that '' It is more blessed to give than 
to receive.'' 



EFFECT OF THE WAR ON RELIGION 25 

This world is a better world than it was four 
years ago. This land is a better land than it was 
three years ago. Our people are a better people 
than they were two years ago. The Church is in 
better position than it was one year ago. For re- 
ligion is better conceived and morality is better 
grounded with the passing of these years, these 
months, these days. There is an understanding of 
the ways of God and of the power of righteousness 
which has come out of conflict and the wrath of 
man which God hath made to praise him. For 
there is a God of love, to those who understand the 
love of God. There is a God of peace. May the 
peace of God be and abide with us. 



CHAPTER II 

WANTED, AN AMERICAN SUNDAY 

Meeting of the Chiirch Club, Philadelphia. 

Discussion of a Subject Made Acute by a Series of 
Things Recently. 

IT is easy, in a time of wide leniency, to espouse 
any course that seems to be one of broad- 
mindedness. But there is quite as much 
danger of going to wrong extremes of laxity. 
There is such a thing as throwing out the baby with 
the bath. Those who have felt in the past most 
strongly averse to old-fashioned repression are those 
likely now to think most clearly, when they peer 
into the future. If I can make some statements 
without dogmatism, they will be heard, I believe, 
without prejudice. I desire to make certain state- 
ments — and at some length. This article is long. 
Let no one begin it unless he is willing to read to 
the end. Let none condemn it point by point. It 
takes the whole to frame an argument. And only 
by that whole the argument must be agreed with or 
arraigned. 



WANTED, AN AMERICAN SUNDAY 

". . . where the spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty." 

// Corinthians 3:17. 

It has come to be a commonplace to speak of 
changes that the ending of the War will bring. All 
know we will be living in a new age, in a changed 
world. This change, all agree, will affect both men 
and manners, all society and all our institutions. 
Among these, none will be more thoroughly re- 
moulded than the Christian Church. 

Other problems are more often referred to in 
current discussion. New light — some think as of 
a lamp, some of a torch — will be cast on some 
weighty problems; the Negro Problem, the Labor 
Problem, the Social Evil, the Divorce Evil, the 
Temperance Cause, the Suffrage Issue. But I am 
wondering: What of the Church? 

And of phases of this last problem, I have one in 
mind particularly: What of that ancient institution 
which has played the major part for centuries in 
making the routine or weekly services both neces- 
sary and convenient? As a question, this is old in 
point of time; but it is new in form at present. It 



28 PAPERS AND ESSAYS FOR CHURCHMEN 

is startling to review what havoc the War has been 
working in this case especially; what it has done, 
and is now doing, to practices of Sunday Obser- 
vance. Just now many things are forcing that so 
ancient institution to a new revaluation. 

The whole question of its future is one of most 
importance to many who think least about it. It is 
intimately connected with the ordering of all men's 
daily lives. In the present stage, of such rapid 
transition, it is one not half sufficiently discussed. 
That is, it is not often enough discussed sanely, nor 
by the right people. I believe the time has come 
for a new kind of frank consideration. 

A straw, showing how the wind blows, has been 
the discussion, in this city, the past summer, over 
Sunday base-ball games for soldiers, sailors and 
marines. Not alone because that was the silly sea- 
son did this have news interest. The important 
point is that so much of the discussion was so silly. 
The grounds of contention were all puerile. The 
arguments, both pro and con, were superficial. The 
same was true in the vexed controversy over the 
proposed free concerts by the Philadelphia Orches- 
tra. But these all are only incidentals. I go on to 
a much wider survey. 



WANTED, AN AMERICAN SUNDAY 29 

First, let me frankly state a thesis. I wish every 
soldier, and every one else, were allowed to play 
base-bdl on Sunday, and to do anything else, that 
the law does not forbid on week days. I wish that, 
not only every library and ever}^ museum, every art 
gallery and every lecture hall, but every moving pic- 
ture place and every dancing parlor were as open 
as they are on week days — only more so. I wish 
every orchestra might play, all opera be sung, pro- 
fessional base-ball games be played all afternoon, 
and every theatre be open in the evening — upon 
one condition. I would take down every prohibi- 
tion — if the people would co-operate. I would be 
in favor of all this — provided. . . . But wait! I 
am coming to that. 

I defend that thesis, for myself — and you. But, 
first, do you mean business ? Are you with me, you 
who want less rigid Sundays? I am with you. 
But my part is not enough. Are you honest, in 
asking what I think you ask ? For this, as for any 
other privilege, are you willing to pay its normal, 
reasonable price? Or do you simply want this day 
of rest from work for nothing? It was not in- 
tended you should have it so. That was in nowise 
the bargain. Have you looked into the contract? 



30 PAPERS AND ESSAYS FOR CHURCHMEN 

As the insurance people say: Have you read your 
policy ? 

For this day has a policy. It has a long, long, 
history. Sunday, or the Sabbath if you like, — al- 
though I am coming to that — is very old. Nobody 
knows how old it is. It was of Jewish observance; 
but it was not by any means of Hebrew origin. 
Philo and Josephus speak of it as already of uni- 
versal diffusion among the then-known peoples of 
the earth. More than a thousand years before 
Abraham's time, there was in Babylonia such an 
observance. 

Incidentally, it was an observance of one day in 
seven. Which day that was, is unimportant. 
What is of importance is that then, and since, and 
now, the purpose of its setting apart was two-fold 
and not one. The idea was that of devoting a day, 
at regular and shortly recurring intervals, for man's 
recovery of his individual freedom and for con- 
sideration of his relation to the unseen. 

Cessation from labor was not enjoined as though 
work on that day were wrong in itself. Let this 
idea be grasped at the outset. The raison d'etre of 
the day was dual and not singular. Rest and wor- 
ship were, always have been, and now are, its two 



WANTED, AN AMERICAN SUNDAY 31 

excuses for existence. But more, the connection 
between these is not a mere conjunction. The idea 
is not merely rest and worship: the idea is rest in 
order to worship. I restate my thesis, therefore, 
with this for its major premise. You may do all 
the above — if you will qualify. You are given 
rest from work that you may play? Not at all. 
You are given rest that you may pray. 

Having prayed, you may then play? Why, cer- 
tainly. Nobody asked you to pray all day. They 
only asked that you should pray primarily. You 
may have all the above then IF . . . Will you do 
it ? In short, will you go to Church ? You won't ? 
Then I fear you are like the blase child aged four, 
depicted recently in Life, who stood on Christmas 
morning looking at a Santa Claus laden with gifts. 
His action was a scornful shrug; has observation 
was : " I don't believe in you any more — but you 
may leave the things." 

Now matters had been moving rapidly enough, in 
the collapse, the breakdown, here of an ideal even 
before the past year came on to throw us into cata- 
clysm. There were readjustments coming to seem 
necessary. To foreign visitors, our old-time Sun- 
day had long been incomprehensible. To tourists 



32 PAPERS AND ESSAYS FOR CHURCHMEN 

abroad, in the same period, the Sunday there was an 
amazement. Moreover, the majority of those who 
tried to see their path most eagerly found themselves 
in a dazed condition. They kept hold on the Puri- 
tanical Sabbath, in theory; yet, in practice, they 
found themselves emulating the Continental Sunday. 
Things had already reached the point where the 
Church was not satisfied with the day, while the 
World was contemptuous of it. 

Since has come on the War, to quicken up the 
process of this dissolution. Suppose, in this coun- 
try, with its hundred millions of mixed population, 
there were myriads even a year ago whom we, resi- 
dent in one region, did not give due credit to as 
still adherent to tenets and practices we thought 
were obsolete. Of these, there were maybe a dozen 
or more millions. This will not be sO' another year. 

Red Cross Pageants and Liberty Loan Parades 
have put upon the streets, to march and to look on, 
the most reticent heretofore homebodies. Anxiety 
to scan casualty lists and to read reports of their 
sons' doings over seas has gained admission for the 
Sunday newspaper into the most close-shuttered 
rooms of every most sequestered hamlet. The 
exigencies of only a few days' furlough home, or 



WANTED, AN AMERICAN SUNDAY 33 

the admission of visitors only on Sunday to the 
cantonments where boys were training, have taken 
parents there and brought their boys home visiting, 
both travelling without compunction on that day 
whereon they would not have stirred formerly. 
The need for workers in niunition plants and ship- 
yards and the feeling that their work w^as patriotic, 
these all have been causes for Sunday labor on the 
part of multitudes who never had so wrought before. 

All this at home; but more among the men in 
camp and, most, among those on the battle field. 
These many million men — and women — will re- 
turn, who never will keep Sunday again as they once 
interpreted the phrase. And they will be the lead- 
ers in all lines of conduct. Theirs will be the stand- 
ard for their fellows' imitation. All this was true, 
in marked degree, after the Civil War. It will be 
more so this time, and for this reason: those who 
come home now will come, not only from having 
seen but from having lived, the Continental Sunday. 
In view of that new national consciousness, of the 
time now coming on apace, what shall this ancient 
institution have to say for itself? 

One important reason for clear thinking on this 
matter lies in the bad effect on people's consciences 



34 PAPERS AND ESSAYS FOR CHURCHMEN 

of going on casually doing things they think are 
wrong, even though they are not wrong at all. The 
question is the more vitally important in view of 
the lackadaisical way that so many fell into their 
state before this quickening of change began. For 
some, their state was that of honest revolt, since 
their pleasure-loving childhood, against a parental 
rule which forbade amusements permitted on week 
days. But for most the change has been neither an 
advance nor a return. It has been simply a slump. 
They have neither gone forward to anything new 
nor backward to anything old and more solid. 

Therefore, I take up my manual of history to see 
what was the origin of that from which these started 
to drift half a century ago. If it was something 
good, then they are bad; if it was bad, then they may 
have drifted forward — with a tide although against 
a current. As a matter of fact, not in any land 
of any other continent, outside of Scotland and some 
parts of England, was there ever anything corre- 
sponding to a Boston or a Philadelphia, a New Eng- 
land or a Southern Sunday of the early part of the 
past century. Those forget their negligible number 
who, upon a practice so partial, try to rest a universal 
principle. 



i 



WANTED, AN AMERICAN SUNDAY 35 

When one who has been bom and raised here- 
abouts tries to face this subject, he finds himself ob- 
sessed by something he was taught was important 
but which is untrue and always was unreal. I have 
special reference to the conditions and customs that 
existed early in the Eastern portion of the United 
States. We have been living here under the domi- 
nation of a set of traditions which came originally 
from two sources, the Puritans and the Scotch- 
Irish. 

Differing widely in many other things, these were 
at one in the emphasis they laid upon " the Sabbath 
Day.'' They and they alone, of all the Christian 
world, called the day " Sabbath.'' The use of this 
name is significant as showing what they conceived 
it to be. They regarded it as an institution specifi- 
cally established by God long ago; they considered 
that the only modification ever warranted was the 
transfer from the seventh to the first day of the 
week. 

For the method of its observance, they looked into 
the Old Testament. Their view of the day was 
greatly different from that taken by the Lutheran, 
the Roman Catholic and the Anglican world, either 
as to its nature or the mode of its observance. But 



36 PAPERS AND ESSAYS FOR CHURCHMEN 

the Sabbatarian tradition, brought hither by those 
two groups, and with a stern degree of permanency, 
was deeply impressed, first upon the Eastern portion 
and later upon the whole of this country. 

It becomes the less remarkable then that, in spite 
of the efforts of Sabbath Alliances and all the other 
orders of that ilk, the drift of our time has been 
away from that kind of observance. This drift has 
now brought us out into the open. That is good. 
It were not good, however, to find that we are in the 
open sea. If a large and rapidly increasing portion 
of the population has ceased to observe just that 
kind of a day, and if we are glad of it, is that syn- 
onymous with saying it is good that there is break- 
ing down of all conventional restraint? 

Must we go on halting, moreover, midway be- 
tween the observance of the day as some remember 
it unpleasantly, the doleful Sabbath of their child- 
hood, which was a day to be dreaded in anticipation 
and to be looked back loathfully upon in retrospec- 
tion, between that kind of day on which nothing en- 
joyable that one might possibly do could be right, 
and another type of day toward which so many peo- 
ple seem to be hastening, on which nothing, no 
matter how secular, how silly or how sacrilegious 



WANTED, AN AMERICAN SUNDAY 37 

they conceivably want to do possibly can be wrong ? 
Between these two extremes is there not somewhere 
a normal mean ? 

One thing we need is a new nomenclature. We 
need a new name to describe a new thing. But, 
first, we need the thing. We need a brand new 
kind of Sunday. I have travelled enough, both at 
home and abroad, to make comparisons. I have 
lived long enough to note as many contrasts. I have 
known the Sabbatical gloom-day of boyhood. It 
was worse than anyone can accuse it of being. I 
have known the Continental Sunday, having been 
in every European country, Latin, Slav, Norman, 
Saxon, and Teuton. I would not approve it here. 
But I want something better in their stead than 
either. There was a Hebrew Sabbath. There was, 
later, a Puritanic parody. There is still a Continen- 
tal anomaly. What I want is an American Sun- 
day. 

It is time for this new institution, for two rea- 
sons. The land is in need of it. But, most, the 
Church has need of it. Just what will happen if 
some worthy kind of Sunday passes from among 
our prized possessions ? The old kind made church- 
going natural. Indeed it made it almost compul- 



38 PAPERS AND ESSAYS FOR CHURCHMEN 

sory. It did this by a sort of vacuum-suction proc- 
ess. There was absolutely nothing to do outside. 
Restriction placed upon diversions gave Religion 
the right of way. We have almost reached the point 
where this prerogative is absent. 

But what will happen when repression of the old 
kind is utterly gone? Will a Sunday without re- 
strictions mean a Church without people? If it 
does, ithen a Country without Sunday will mean, 
sooner or later, a Nation without God. There will 
inevitably come a weakening of faith, a relaxing of 
moral restraints. This cannot be contemplated 
without dread. It will thus be seen that there are 
underlying grave considerations, deeper far than 
quibbles over what things are and what are not per- 
missible, in modes alone or recreation. 

The facts at present seem to be about these. In 
the whole community, there are three classes of 
people. First, there are those who work on Sun- 
day. They work because they have to. Theirs is 
an increasing number. And their practice is per- 
missible. " Six days shalt thou labor, etc. . . . but 
on the seventh day . . . rest . . .'' To the primi- 
tive man, and to the unsophisticated man today, this 
was and still seems, simple. But it is not. For 



WANTED, AN AMERICAN SUNDAY 39 

what is labor? And how universal is the possibility 
of rest in the sense indicated? 

A man's labor is the long task to which he is 
bound. That is the thing he is called to lay down 
once a week and leave untouched for a day. But 
the number who are prevented from doing so is al- 
ways increasing. It increases as society becomes 
complex. When every man owned his own ox or 
ass, he could take off the yoke and the bridle and 
let them lie down for a day and stop work along 
with them. But when the ox grows into a great 
railway and the ass into an ocean line of steamers, 
they cannot stop altogether. What, then, is to be 
done ? I reply, do the best you can. It is unthink- 
able that God means progress and civilization to stop 
because they involve some hard necessities. That 
class is easily disposed of. 

Secondly, there is the group of those who rest 
and worship. They come nearest to observing the 
day rightly of three classes. And yet, for the most 
part, they fall short of that ideal set above: rest 
in order to worship. The difficulty with their num- 
ber, the reason it lessens and does not increase, is 
that they are not found taking their stand upon solid 
ground, either in theory or in practice. There being 



40 PAPERS AND ESSAYS FOR CHURCHMEN 

only a conjunctive between the two things, instead 
of a subjunctive, the one is always pulling against 
the other. Where Church-going is esteemed the 
consequence of prohibition of amusement, the tide 
is too strong against it. Were it made the conse- 
quent of rightful reasons for the day's observance, 
the stars in their courses would fight for it. 

In the third class are those who only rest and do 
not worship. These are the majority. I pause 
not to describe them. They are legion and their 
types are multiple. I only ask them why they rest. 
If it is for no higher purpose than to gain strength 
for more labor, the game is not worth the candle. 
If the mind and the soul are not the richer for this 
spiritual payday, then what were the good of either 
work or rest? Surcease from toil is of no value, if 
it is solely for the purpose of performing more 
labor. For what is all labor worth? Is it ever an 
end in itself? Is it not only means to an end? 

But, one makes reply, it is a means to earn a liv- 
ing. I retort : That kind of life is not worth living. 
That is only the existence of the beasts that perish. 
That is an endless cycle. It is a most vicious circle. 
It is but the practice of the old farmer whose motto 
was, " To buy some land, to raise some com, to feed 



WANTED, AN AMERICAN SUNDAY 41 

some hogs, to sell, to get more money, to buy more 
land, to raise more corn, to feed more hogs, to . . ." 
and so on ad infinitum. 

The Church, to such as these, has not been speak- 
ing with clear enough voice. It has not, in its in- 
ventory, been placing a high enough value on its 
best goods. There ought to be the firm conviction 
that the spiritual aspect of life is a treasure which, 
equally with the Puritans, we are bound to safe- 
guard. There ought to be assurance that the great- 
est thing in humanity, today as always, the fulfil- 
ment of the highest aims at present and the pledge 
of greatest things to come, is the consciousness which 
religion possesses. 

You do not have to go to Church unless you want 
to ? But why on earth don't you want to ? You do 
not like the Church? Well, that is easy. Make it 
better. You can't stand the preaching? I can't 
either — some of it, some kinds of it. But any 
person, any group or whole community of persons, 
can so by selection find, or by co-operation bring 
about, whatever form of Church they do desire. 

There is something wrong with a Church which 
people are too tired to attend. But there is some- 
thing wrong with people also who refuse to worship 



42 PAPERS AND ESSAYS FOR CHURCHMEN 

rightly because they are tired. It is as who should 
say : I am too hungry to eat ; I am too weary to rest ; 
I am too sad to want sympathy ; I am too dull with 
being driven all the week to need relief and uplift 
from that plodding blind routine by cheer and in- 
spiration. This is what the Church is for. If the 
one you frequent does not do this, see that it does — 
and that right soon. 

There is one other group, however, sub-division 
of this largest class. Those spoken of have worked 
themselves to somnolence through six days; they 
sleep on the seventh. These work little all the days ; 
they want to rest another out of force of habit. 
The first say they are ^' dog-tired." And the word 
is good ; they rest the way a dog rests. The second 
were born tired ; they never get over it, even so much 
as one day out of seven. They idle uninterrupt- 
edly. 

This statement has many corollaries. For ex- 
ample, it is idle men who have least use for Sunday. 
It is very significant that the people who most flag- 
rantly disregard this day and all its beneficent re- 
straints, are the people who have least to do on other 
days. Yet it is quite natural that this should be so. 
Its blessed provision for surcease of toil has no 



WANTED, AN AMERICAN SUNDAY 43 

meaning for them. They are Hke the negro, set to 
hoe corn, found lying under a shade tree, who when 
asked what he was doing drawled : " Waitin' f er 
the sun to go down to quit work." 

The more pubHc holidays there are, the less each 
seems to be used for the special celebration it was 
set apart for. So also, the more of those there are, 
the more this other day of the week in addition 
comes to be employed for a holiday outright. It is 
Saturday-closing that has begotten the Week-end 
proclivity. Those who must play golf most on 
Sunday are those ludicrous " tired business men *' 
whose work has been the most done for them 
through the week. And, anomaly strangest of all, 
there are those who go on scrambling excursions, 
racing to resorts and hectically seeking something 
that exists no more than the Pot of Gold at the end 
of the Rainbow. It is these who reverse the most a 
natural process. It takes them all week to rest up 
from their Sunday. 

But I must come back to my line of argument. I 
stand face to face af ront two questions : Why should 
one keep Sunday? How should one keep Sunday? 
It appears to be the second question that perplexes 
people most. Strange how they do not realize that 



44 PAPERS AND ESSAYS FOR CHURCHMEN 

its answer depends on their reply to the first ques- 
tion. If they could only get the first matter straight, 
the second would settle itself. 

Rest and worship, relaxation and uplift; these are 
what the day is for. But these two things are curi- 
ously bound together. The one cannot be obtained 
without the other. The second cannot be indulged 
without the first; the first has no claim to perma- 
nency without the second. Men may quit work, but 
only for a man's reason. Worship is, for rest of 
this kind, the sole purpose. And no other will suf- 
fice to keep the day. In order that each man may 
have opportunity to rest at stated intervals, there 
must be a common understanding. What motive 
alone then is strong enough to constrain a whole 
community to take their rest simultaneously? 

It may be said that law can do this. But law 
cannot. Probably the silliest as well as the most un- 
christian laws in the world are those known as 
^' Sabbath Laws." They rest not only upon a mis- 
conception of the institution but on ignorance as 
well of human nature. The only motive which is 
strong enough to secure unanimity of action in this 
matter is some motive which lies at the foundation 
of human nature. The only thing which can safe- 



WANTED, AN AMERICAN SUNDAY 45 

guard the needed day of rest is religion. To what- 
ever extent the day becomes secularized, it becomes 
jeopardized. 

In the case of probably no other institution of 
such cardinal importance have errors so serious and 
so continuous been made. The most grievous of 
these is that with regard to the ground of compul- 
sion on which observance rests; the relation imag- 
ined of the Fourth Commandment to the conscience 
of the Christian world. The Sunday question as 
such is only as old as the beginning of the Christian 
era. Christianity, on its appearance, took over this 
great religious asset; but the early Christians took 
only its essence, not its form. 

It was not the Sabbath of the Jews they took; it 
was the old Roman Day of the Sun — hence, inci- 
dentally, the name. But they gave the day a flavor 
of its own. They not only changed the day; they 
far more radically changed its motif. The question 
therefore of the relation of Sunday to the Sabbath 
should present no difficulty ; for there is no relation. 
Let us get this clear. We are not dealing with the 
Hebrew Sabbath, either the day of the week, which 
was, and still is, Saturday; nor with the mode of 
that observance, which was first Sabbatical and then, 



46 PAPERS AND ESSAYS FOR CHURCHMEN 

in Protestantism only, and there only in part, Puri- 
tanical. 

About this whole matter, there are two statements 
of utmost importance. The first is that keeping 
Sunday today is one of the things one does, if at iall, 
not because one has to, but because one wants to. 
The second is, that Sunday as an institution is not 
something that exists for its own sake, and to be 
honored as such, but something that exists to serve 
a purpose, and is to be used as such. It is not the 
chief end of man to keep Sunday; it is the chief 
end of Sunday to serve man. If these two facts 
be gotten clearly in mind, much of the difficulty that 
hedges the subject about resolves itself. And much 
of the perplexity and apprehension of so many peo- 
ple in regard to it is seen to be needless and ground- 
less. 

The statement that Sunday does not exist for its 
own sake but for a purpose, that single statement 
sums up, and it clears up, one entire half of the sub- 
ject. And it has more meaning than any save the 
very few have ever realized. Here then stands an 
institution, and here is man. He is of no use to it; 
it is of use to him. But, like everything else, it is 
of use only if he uses it. Let him take it, or leave it ; 



WANTED, AN AMERICAN SUNDAY 47 

use it or neglect it; esteem it highly or despise it. 
It will do him no harm if he never touches it; but it 
will do him no good if he does not touch it. 

Furthermore, if he uses it at all, he will use it 
rightly, never from compulsion but only from 
choice. Not to see this is the mistake of the typical 
Sabbath Reform Associations. They make the mis- 
take that everyone does who attempts to make men 
good by statute. If a man does not use the day, 
then he does the day no injury; he injures only him- 
self. And to urge him with any profit to use it, 
one need never attempt to coerce or compel; one 
may only persuade and constrain. There are two 
minor aspects of the subject, aspects only and not 
the subject itself. The first is the so-called '' break- 
ing '' of the day by working upon it ; the sin involved 
in working on Sunday. Here is a point against 
which many a reformer hurls arguments that break ; 
they break because they fall in such confusion. For 
this matter is one that requires very clear thinking 
and the making of very fine distinctions. Everyone 
realizes that there are kinds of work that are wrong 
on this day because unnecessary. But everyone 
must also realize that there are other forms of work 
that are right because inevitable. The difficult thing 



48 PAPERS AND ESSAYS FOR CHURCHMEN 

is that, in a state of civilization which develops as 
our own, a vast and ever increasing amount of the 
first kind is constantly falling into the second class. 

Besides the so-called breaking of the day by 
working upon it, there is the so-called '^ desecration " 
of the day by playing upon it. This is a subject 
upon which I may feel as strongly as I will; but it 
is one upon which I realize that I had better feel 
normally. Ruskin once wrote, " God forgive me 
those who trained me, how I have hated this day! " 
That was one extreme form of observance — and 
its result. As a .type of the other extreme, witness 
any modern Sunday as it is now spent. There is 
somewhere a normal mean between that morbidness 
which counts a laugh a sin on Sunday and that flip- 
pancy which counts a sin something to laugh at any 
day; but it is hard to find. It is hard because in- 
dividual temperament, the personal equation, the 
point of view, the time, the place, the circumstance 
and the motive all must be considered in relation to 
each action. 

Is there then any law for Sunday observance? 
Law is a harsh word. I dislike it. Laws of man 
are of little use in this connection. Yet there still 
is law. There is a rule of nature; and that is the 



WANTED, AN AMERICAN SUNDAY 49 

will of God. Moreover, common sense has weighty 
words to utter on the subject. There is such a thing 
as common decency; which is the same as common 
honesty. One cannot have one's cake and eat it. 
It is strange so many try. They have this day of 
rest on one condition. How long shall they have it, 
if they ignore wholly the condition? 

If I were going to make Sunday laws, and if I 
would outline in doing so the right policy of the 
Church, they would all be positive. Not one should 
be negative. I would cease to prohibit and begin to 
provide. Has the Church not too long pursued the 
opposite practice ? Have not Church people sought 
to make the day prevail simply by enacting prohibi- 
tions against work and play? Is it not incumbent 
more upon good people to say what ought, than 
what ought not, to be done? Does not the same 
obligation lie here to provide the right form of rest 
as to proscribe the wrong kind ? 

Suppose the whole world took the Church to- 
morrow at its word! Suppose that every man, 
woman and child in this whole city came to Sunday 
Service, one forenoon, and then said: Now you 
have us on your hands; we are your guests, your 
wards, your children. Will you let us go and play, 



50 PAPERS AND ESSAYS FOR CHURCHMEN 

now we have performed our devotions? If so, 
where and how ? It is strange that the Church does 
not see that the whole problem of Amusement comes 
in under the heading of Rest. 

There is need for a saner conception. That is, 
there is need for more cheer in the whole observance 
of this day. The early spirit of Sunday, as the old 
time spirit of Sabbath, alike were joyous. So it 
should be to this day. The whole of Sunday ought 
to be a veritable day of joy. But this means that 
the whole day is one day. Your pseudo-reformer 
says : You may do things that are not hurtful in 
themselves, that do not cause others to work in 
order to minister to your enjoyment, and that do not 
interrupt others in the religious observance of the 
day. But that treats you as outsiders. I would 
treat you as insiders. This day is your day. Nor 
does that program, take him far. The Church must 
do more than merely allow or forbid. It must pro- 
vide and encourage. The trouble is, so many 
simply fritter away the day in aimless fashion, 
through sheer lack of initiative and invention. 
They need help, not hindrance. The Church ought 
to provide for all the day, not for one part of it only 
as now. It is not enough to open the church doors 



WANTED, AN AMERICAN SUNDAY 51 

one or two hours and say : Do thus for this period ; 
and then, for the rest of the day, to practise the 
method : '* Go and see what Johnny is doing and 
tell him he mustn't/' 

This failure is the more strange in view of the 
Church's aim at Social Service so-called all other 
days of the week. As, in the country at large, and 
in large cities in particular, these very reformers are 
trying, the whole week, each week the year through- 
out, to get people to do this or that, against their 
lower incHnations for their higher welfare — be 
cleaned up, live hygienically, be educated, enter- 
tained, enlightened — why not so all hours of one 
day? Why is there not the same attempt to do 
constructive and creative planning, and the same 
providing, for the other six hours as well of this 
day as for the other six days of this week? Why 
do they not do, for six sevenths of this day, what 
they do assiduously for six sevenths of each 
week? 

Worship at best can consume only one half of 
the day. Men, and especially men who labor, are 
given exemption from their toil one day in seven 
for a two-fold purpose — first, for worship, and, 
second, for rest. There are persons for whom rest 



52 PAPERS AND ESSAYS FOR CHURCHMEN 

might consist in idleness. But there are multitudes 
for whom idleness is worse than labor. What they 
want is opportunity to reconstruct their bodies, now 
they have refreshed their wills. Thus to form new 
habits and rebuild their bodies is to take rest in some 
form of recreation; some form that is harmless, of 
course. 

But what form? Well, what do you, madam, 
and you, sir, do at country homes on Sundays? 
You do the things you most enjoy. Perhaps you 
sit on your veranda and read Maeterlinck. But, 
then, there are millions upon millions who do not 
enjoy doing this. Perhaps you stroll, or sing, or 
sleep. But these people I speak of are not sleepy, 
and they do not want to sing. The day, for both 
of you, is a day of rest. But rest is very languor- 
ous, if it is only idleness. And idleness is worse 
than labor, if it is enforced. 

Here is where I would begin the making of Sun- 
day laws. Play should be the privilege alone of 
those who work. Sunday ought to be earned by 
weekday industry. But having come, it ought to be 
enjoyed alone by those who qualify. As a matter 
of fact, this theory works well when tried in your 
family., It works the same way in school It 



WANTED, AN AMERICAN SUNDAY 53 

works well in the larger school family of a parish. 
I have, in my own parish, for example, a lot of 
young working people. We have, for their Sunday 
use in summer, a Fresh Air Farm. What I have 
said to these people, and what I believe in thor- 
oughly, is this t Sunday is a day of rest from labor, 
principally for the purpose of worship. But, after 
an act of worship has been performed (which in the 
nature of things cannot continue all day), the re- 
mainder of the day is normally to be spent as a day 
of rest. Rest, however, has meaning only when it 
becomes recreative. And recreations, for different 
people are different things, depending on what 
things so many different people most enjoy. 

I have told these young people, told them plainly 
and honestly, that if they will say their prayers with 
the clergy at one hour, the clergy are perfectly will- 
ing to play with them and to make play for them 
at other hours of the same day; that, if they will 
comply with the requirements of the Church and 
observe Sunday first of all as a day of prayer, they 
may have the rest of it as a day of play; and that, 
if they have stopped their work in order to worship, 
having worshipped they may '' Walk abroad and 
recreate themselves." If this be treason, either to 



54 PAPERS AND ESSAYS FOR CHURCHMEN 

the Church or to the Day, let those who wish to do 
so make the most of it. 

What works in the small successfully would work 
as well in the large, if it were tried consistently. 
The fact is that this very principle is applied else- 
where. It is applied in school. Those who will 
not do their sums or learn their lessons are kept after 
hours. Those who flunk through the entire term 
are forced to study through vacation and forfeit 
their fun. Indeed the whole public school system 
exists only in conjunction with the task of the truant 
officer. Free education is conditioned on compul- 
sory education. To do nothing in the line of that 
for which this day subsists but to rest might well for- 
feit, on the part of any so shirking, the simple right 
to rest. If the police picked up the man who spends 
this whole day of prayer at nothing but play and 
said: '^Here! Pray or go to work!'' would it 
be any more surprising than the order : " Work or 
Fight"? 

Why is it that, in almost every age, Religion has 
deplored its feeble hold upon this day? Is it not 
because Religion has not taken itself seriously 
enough? Is it not that the World has taken the 
Church and Religion consequently upon their own 



WANTED, AN AMERICAN SUNDAY 55 

appraisement? Chrysostom, the middle of the 
Fourth Century, in language that might have been 
that of yesterday, lamented the sparce attendance at 
places of worship compared with the crowding of 
popular entertainments. Sir Nicholas Bacon, at the 
opening of Parliament in 1572, asked why the com- 
mon people came so seldom to Common Prayer. 

The reason today is the same reason. It is all 
quite simple. Rest and worship were, still are, set 
side by side. The only nexus is a choice between 
them. It is not sufficiently pointed out that the rest 
is at price of the worship. 

There is only one reason why people do not go 
more to Church. That is, because they do not want 
to. It is not because they cannot get off work: 
it is because they do not want to stay off play. He 
Avere a mean employer indeed who would not give 
his employees time to say their prayers. That man 
would steal bird-seed from a cuckoo clock. But he 
is an equally mean employee who takes one whole 
day out of seven for one purpose and then spends it 
doing everything except the thing intended. He no 
more deserves the day to be continued for his benefit 
than the office boy who asks for half a day in which 



S6 PAPERS AND ESSAYS FOR CHURCHMEN 

to bury his grandmother and then spends it watch- 
ing the White Elephants defeat Detroit. 

Nor will he be allowed to do this indefinitely. 
The idea that the day can survive, which began on 
a spiritual and ideal basis, if put to the baser uses of 
lower and physical nature only, is absurd. Sunday 
cannot lose its worshipful character wholly and be- 
come a mere holiday without losing eventually its 
characteristic of rest and becoming a work day. It 
is necessary and it is permissible for men to pause 
in their labor to speak with the God; but it is not 
necessary, and they will not be permitted indefinitely, 
to take the day for any lesser purpose. Strange it 
is that men so clear-headed in all other things should 
so far fail to see this and fail so persistently. 
Strange it is that they do not see the anomaly in the 
theory and the penalty in the practice. 

So long as the day was used, and wherever it is 
still used, for its distinctive purpose, it has been and 
is still gladly given as a day free from work. But in 
other times and places it has not been and it will 
not be. This is a perfectly natural process. Here, 
as elsewhere, cause always precedes effect. The 
cause is simple; the effect is obvious. This has been 
the history of the day's loss as a day of rest to men 



WANTED, AN AMERICAN SUNDAY 57 

who labor wherever it has been lost. Here, as in 
every similar field, the case has not been one of 
robbery; it has been a case of forfeit. 

But you say what is proposed above is imprac- 
ticable ? I suppose it is — by law. But that does 
not prevent the principle from being sound. Per- 
haps, in things thus needful for their highest wel- 
fare, men cannot be coerced ; they can only be con- 
strained. Then I constrain you. I exhort you. 
But, I not only plead with you ; I reason with you. 
Much consideration for the body and its functions 
is the fashion ; but too much of this is folly. Those 
appetites are such as grow by what they feed on. 
And so do these others grow. Which food is the 
better, adjudged by its products, that of the body 
or that of the soul? 

When the Christian religion came into the world, 
no one save the Lord's Disciples cared anything 
about the Lord's Day. Because these increased and 
multiplied, the day's observance spread and their 
practices were diffused. Is it likely to be otherwise 
in any other age? The thing to propagate is the 
Christian spirit; the Christian practice will spread 
with it. The world took over Sunday, both the 
name and the form of observance, at first. The 



58 PAPERS AND ESSAYS FOR CHURCHMEN 

world's people have tried somewhat to keep the day 
since, selfishly refusing the observance. The world 
did not make it; and the world cannot unmake it. 
But men of the world can forfeit it. Today, as at 
the beginning it stands or falls with its right ob- 
servance by those who want it. But they must want 
it honestly for what it is. The rightful observance 
is not that of letter but of spirit. " Now, the Lord 
is that spirit; and where the spirit of the Lord is, 
there is liberty.'' 



CHAPTER III 

WOMAN SUFFRAGE AND RELIGION 

The Clerical Brotherhood, Philadelphia. 

First Read as a Paper hut Later Recomposed as a 
Tract for The Times. 

I AM opposed to Woman Suffrage because I 
am a Christian, albeit an unworthy one; be- 
cause I believe in the dignity of meekness 
and the splendor of humility. Lacordaire 
said to his countrymen : " You have written upon 
the monuments of your city the words Liberty, Fra- 
ternity, Equality. Above Liberty, write Duty; 
above Fraternity, write Humility; above Equality, 
write Service. Above the clamorous creed of your 
rights, inscribe the divine creed of your duties." The 
greatest power in the world is the power of influence. 
This is the prerogative of woman, whether she be 
Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch or Queen Victoria 
on the throne. It is a spiritual power sneered at by 
the world; but it is the power that has removed 
mountains. If it is lost by women, it is lost forever. 



WOMAN SUFFRAGE AND RELIGION 

" These be sound doctrines and well suited to the times.'* 

Prayer Book Homily. 

There is not the slightest use for any man to dis- 
cuss the subject of Woman Suffrage before any as- 
sembly of women exclusively. Either men or 
women may discuss it among themselves, each in 
their own way, in their own language and using 
their own thought terms; but they need not try, 
with any hope of success, to reason with each other. 
I have twice declined to make a speech on either side 
of this question to coteries of women. I know well 
that if I tried to speak either to Suffragists or Anti- 
Suffragists, I would fail to ingratiate myself with 
either. This is because I would speak the language 
of neither. One might say the very same things to 
both ; but neither would believe them. Each group 
wants a different thing; but they both want what 
they want in the same way. And that way is not a 
man's way. 

Nor, in making a profitable study of this subject, 
is it worth while for any one to do what I confess 



WOMAN SUFFRAGE AND RELIGION 6i 

I did at the outset. I foolishly went first to the 
headquarters of both " parties " of women. I se- 
cured from the Headquarters of the Pennsylvania 
Society Opposed to Woman Suffrage all their 
printed literature. I secured likewise, from the 
Woman Suffrage Headquarters, all the literature 
they use in propaganda. In my study of the sub- 
ject, by this method, I have had what I discover is 
a commonplace experience. I began instinctively 
by favoring the cause. I would have stopped there, 
as do so many, if I had learned nothing more. As 
the result of other study I have come in the end to 
disfavor it unqualifiedly. 

And, in arriving at that point I have progressed 
by a typically feminine circuitous route. It was 
during the perusal of the literature against it that I 
began to favor it. It was only after I had perused 
thoroughly the printed matter advocating it that I 
found how utterly preposterous it is. I made the 
discovery that, as someone has said jokingly — but 
spoke truth when he said it: The strongest argu- 
ments against Woman Suffrage are the arguments 
women advance in its favor. 

The subject itself, as one phase at least of the 
long-discussed subject of Woman's Rights and as an 



62 PAPERS AND ESSAYS FOR CHURCHMEN 

aspect of the more widely diffused and ramifying 
phenomenon of Feminism, is not new. It has, for 
almost a century, been a phase of the former. The 
world throughout, it is today an aspect of the latter. 
Within the past generation, however, it has taken on 
specific forms. And it has met with both success 
and failure in divergent quarters. 

The twelve equal suffrage states at the date of this 
writing are Wyoming, Colorado, Idaho, Utah, 
Washington, California, Arizona, Kansas, Oregon, 
Illinois, Montana and Nevada. Alaska granted full 
suffrage to women in 19 13. In Illinois, women 
vote on all offices not created by the State Constitu- 
tion. Conversely, in the past three years, seven 
States have turned down similar proposed amend- 
ments. In 191 2, Woman Suffrage lost its case in 
Ohio, Michigan and Wisconsin. It was defeated 
again in Michigan the following year. In 19 14, it 
was rejected in Ohio, Nebraska, Missouri, North 
Dakota and South Dakota. In three large eastern 
States, New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania, it 
happens coincidently to be an issue this autumn. If 
Pennsylvania rejects the proposed amendment to its 
State Constitution at this coming election, the same 
question cannot come before the people again for 



WOMAN SUFFRAGE AND RELIGION 63 

another test before the fall of 1919. So much for 
facts that amplify a situation. 

Next after these facts, let us look for a moment 
at a mood, and that again among both men and 
women. Among some of both, there is a tendency 
to treat the whole thing as a joke. I am not one 
of those who are inclined to treat the subject with 
levity. I admit that there are ten times as many 
people today who do this as there are persons who 
realize that it is a peril. I grant that we are dealing 
rather with a symptom of other conditions than with 
a condition in itself. But there is more in this than 
that. This is more than a mania : it is a menace. 

The reason why I consider it a menace is that, if 
this amendment is passed now, casually, by men, 
unthinking, it cannot be repealed except by voting 
men and women both; and it is proverbially hard 
to get people, whether male or female, to commit 
political hari-kari. The only humorous phase I see 
of the whole discussion is the fact that there are ten 
fallacious arguments advanced for it to one sound 
argument that can be framed against it. That may 
seem of much importance or of little, according to 
one's mood. If, on the one hand, there is senti- 
ment and on the other hand only common sense; 



64 PAPERS AND ESSAYS FOR CHURCHMEN 

if in the one camp there is discussion of innumerable 
details and in the other only of basic principles, we 
need not be surprised if there seems to be more 
agitation for it than there is repression against 
it. 

But what other moods are most prevalent? 
There are several, of men and women both. Of 
women, there are a few who are aggressive and 
eager. These are polemic to the point of being 
pugnacious. On the other hand, a committee of 
women who have just completed a tour of Pennsyl- 
vania, which has taken them into many counties 
with the celebrated Suffrage Bell, regret the wide- 
spread apathy they found among the majority of 
women. Among men also, the large majority are 
indifferent. But these same men are no more so 
regarding this than they are regarding any other 
social or political question. Their attitude is conse- 
quently a reflection on themselves in this case as in 
that. On the other hand, there are a host of men 
in the community, who are in an easy-going attitude 
of polite and courteous tolerance toward any request 
that comes from women just because they are 
women. They take this attitude upon the ground 
that it does not make any difference anyway. This 



WOMAN SUFFRAGE AND RELIGION 65 

courtesy is laudable — unless so be that the request 
is for something unreasonable on the face of it, be- 
cause impracticable in the nature of it. 

I pass by, in introduction, three conventional argu- 
ments. First, the so-called " theological argument/' 
What St. Paul said about women being seen and not 
heard, or words to that effect, would not be an argu- 
ment one way or another; since he was advising 
wom.en how to comport themselves for their own 
sake and we are concerned, not with their pleasure 
nor their profit, but with what would be of most ad- 
vantage to the State. 

Secondly, I pass by the '' argument from nature.'' 
Those who eliminate this are quite correct also. 
The last leaf in the book of nature has not yet been 
reached, certainly not of feminine nature. And it 
will not be for many moons. I do not know what 
Woman will do ultimately. I do not even know 
what she will do next. 

Thirdly, I eliminate the " argument from justice." 
This is of no consequence. The question at issue 
has nothing to do with rights, either men's or 
women's. This is for the simple reason that suf- 
frage is not the inherent right of anybody. It is not 
even a privilege. The question of who shall exer- 



66 PAPERS AND ESSAYS FOR CHURCHMEN 

cise it is and always has been solely a question of 
expediency. 

Holding to these distinctions, I have sought, in a 
wholly other field than that of women's reasoning 
for arguments. Those I find based upon facts set 
forth by men of eminence. There is an abundance 
of this kind of literature also. I would not make 
invidious distinctions between certain well known 
men and other well known women, save as such dis- 
tinctions make themselves on other grounds of 
merit. But there are such grounds. And there are 
such men. 

I refer, for example, to that address delivered by 
the Hon. Elihu Root, on the floor of the New York 
Constitutional Convention, in which he said : *' I 
believe that it would be a loss to women, to every 
woman and to all women. And I believe it would 
be an injury to the State and to every man and 
woman in the State." I refer to Ex-President 
Taft's recent article, in which he makes, among 
others, this particularly strong point : namely, '' This 
is no time to try this experiment in the largely popu- 
lated states of the east." He might have added 
that, in the very serious and unsettled situation in 
this country in regard to national and international 



WOMAN SUFFRAGE AND RELIGION 67 

problems, this is no time to double the electorate by- 
adding to it an inexperienced and emotional element. 
I refer to the statement of ex- Judge Edgar M. Cul- 
len, in The New York Times of September 3rd, in 
which he objects to granting the ballot to women for 
as good and cogent reasons. 

Now, over against those arguments, of such men, 
framed for the consideration of men, I am not con- 
tent to admit in evidence as of equal weight the 
opinions of women and, without discourteous dis- 
crimination, especially of such women as are they 
w^ho are creating the most agitation. Those men 
have studied intimately both the science and nature, 
the theory and practice, of popular government. 
They have based their arguments upon that study. 
These women have done neither. What I would 
contend for is the sanity of those men's reasoning, 
as adjudged by the eminence of their positions. 
What I would urge is a study, by men, of their 
statements. What I would bespeak for them is the 
deserved acceptance, by men, of their point of view. 

I must make, in my own thinking, one other dis- 
tinction or selection. It is one thing to consider 
this subject from the standpoint of Suffragists: it 
is quite another matter to consider it from the point 



68 PAPERS AND ESSAYS FOR CHURCHMEN 

of view of those who would do the suffering. It 
might or might not result either in pleasure or in 
profit or both, to women for them to vote ; the ques- 
tion at issue is whether it would be of advantage to 
the State to have them vote. Because this distinc- 
tion is not clearly held, several points seem to me to 
have received a great deal more attention than they 
deserve. And they have provoked a vast deal of 
argument that is irrelevant. 

First, whether women would or would not vote 
if they had the chance; whether the majority of 
them want the ballot, I do not know. What I do 
know is that it is not germane to this consideration. 
As a gentleman, I hope I am considerate of any 
lady's wishes; but so I am also of any child's. A 
child might want the moon. It might not be pos- 
sible for him to get it. And it might not be good 
for him to have it. The important point is, it would 
not be good for the moon — nor for others who 
need the moon where it is at the time. 

Nor yet has this question to do with a second 
irrelevant point ; namely, the good or bad effect that 
going to the polls, mingling in poHtics, etc., would 
have upon women themselves. I am thoroughly sat- 
isfied myself — and this conviction comes to me, not 



WOMAN SUFFRAGE AND RELIGION 69 

out of the nebulous realm of theory, but out of 
first-hand observation and experience in States now 
having woman suffrage — that its effect is not ele- 
vating but the reverse. Whether it were one thing 
or the other, however, this would have no bearing 
on the chief est point at issue; namely, whether it 
would or would not improve the electorate as a 
whole. 

That narrows the whole question down to this: 
Would government by the suffrage of men and 
women be better government or worse than by the 
suffrage of men alone ? Now, it will be agreed that 
women constitute a class in number equal to half the 
adult population. Wherein then possibly could con- 
sist the value of merely doubling figures ? That is 
the question we are face to face with. What change 
could be wrought in any result, any more than in an 
algebraic equation, by merely doubling the quantities 
upon both sides? Suppose that all women as well 
as all men voted — all women, remember — rich 
and poor, old and young, black and white, intelli- 
gent and ignorant, honest and dishonest. Would 
you not have either one of two resulting conditions ? 

Either wives, sisters and daughters would vote 
with their husbands, brothers and fathers, or they 



70 PAPERS AND ESSAYS FOR CHURCHMEN 

would not. In the first case, you would have pre- 
cisely the same result in the end, with double the 
present figures; only in the second case could you 
have any different result. Would that difference 
be to the hurt or to the benefit of the State? In 
short, is woman more fit to vote, is she as fit to vote, 
as man? My categorical answer is: Woman is 
not competent to exercise the franchise to the in- 
creased advantage of the community at large. 

The reason for this I hint at in the phrase of 
Kipling when he speaks of the "God of abstract 
justice which no woman understands." Permis- 
sion for her to vote would not be merely innocently 
harmless to the State ; it would be positively hurtful 
to Society. It would increase the danger of unwise 
legislation. It would do this by promoting the 
influence of " organized emotion " in the conduct 
of Government. And, God wot, we have too much 
of that already. 

It is plain then that, in consideration of this thesis, 
limited and thus delimited, many of the reasons ad- 
vanced both pro and con, both by the Suffragists 
and by the Anti-Suffragists fall of their own weight. 
In spite of attempts at elimination, however, there 
are half a dozen points the women claimants for the 



WOMAN SUFFRAGE AND RELIGION 71 

ballot make that will not down. There are three 
reasons they advance for the sake of the women in 
question and three other reasons why they claim 
that their voting would be an advantage to the State. 
I cite these, not in order to frame an argument in 
rebuttal against each so much as to show that they 
have no standing in court. 

The first is fairly summarized in this syllogism : 
Suffrage is synonymous with citizenship: women 
are citizens; ergo, women should vote. That syl- 
logism would be sound, save for the fallacy in its 
major premise. Suffrage has nothing to do with 
citizenship. This is a fact long since determined in 
the courts of law. If that major premise fails, the 
argument comes to a quick conclusion. The point 
long ago was settled that the word " citizen," in the 
Federal Constitution, included not only men and 
women, but also children, even babes in arms. 

The second of these reasons to be ruled out is 
suggested by the cant phrase, so glibly quoted but 
so often misapplied : ^' Taxation without represen- 
tation." Now, it simply is not true at present that 
even male representation is proportioned to taxation. 
Therefore, how does it follow that taxation could 
be made a basis of or a reason for representation? 



72 PAPERS AND ESSAYS FOR CHURCHMEN 

Men are not allowed to vote because, nor in propor- 
tion as, they are taxed. I am glad of this. No 
more are they exempt from taxation because they 
do not vote. I am still more glad of this. Is it 
not strange that those who discourse upon this as a 
topic do not see that here is a sword that cuts both 
ways? The cold fact is that there are already a 
hundred men voting who pay practically no taxes 
to one woman who is paying taxes without voting. 
This number ought to be diminished rather than 
increased. 

Yet, thirdly, both these points reduce ultimately 
to another. This is why the question of Woman 
Suffrage has long been a phase of that vexed ques- 
tion wrongly spoken of as Woman's Rights. But 
note well. Suffrage is not a right of anybody, man 
or woman. This would be true without anyone's 
saying it; but it becomes the more impressive in 
quotation from a dozen eminent lawyers and states- 
men combined that '' Suffrage is not a natural right : 
it is simply a means of government." Back of all 
these men's opinion, stands the decision oi the Su- 
preme Court of the United States. 

The claim need not be pressed, nor the recognition 
clamored for, of the '' equality " of men and women. 



WOMAN SUFFRAGE AND RELIGION 73 

Equality is admitted; but it should also be defined. 
Things that are equal need not be similar. Indeed 
the very definition of things parallel is of two 
straight lines extending in the same direction at 
right angles to the same plane that never meet. 
Who would deny that Thomas A. Edison and James 
J. Hill, Beethoven and Henry Ford, Caruso and 
Theodore Roosevelt, Joseph Hoffman and Jess 
Willard are equal? But who, on the contrary, 
would claim that they are similar ? 

There are likewise three fallacious forms of rea- 
soning that women fall into when they advocate the 
extension of suffrage to women for the benefit of the 
State. The first I dignify with the name of an 
argument; although it is, as everyone knows, only 
an illustration. I refer to the citation often made 
of certain types of women who are at present de- 
nied the ballot though infinitely better qualified to 
exercise it than multitudes of men who at present 
have the ballot. Now to compare two things, and 
have the comparison prove anything, they must be 
comparable. It is not even a valid illustration, let 
alone an argument, to pick out from among all 
women one special group or type of women and set 
this coterie over in contrast with a special group of 



74 PAPERS AND ESSAYS FOR CHURCHMEN 

an entirely different type of men, culled out from 
among all men. I admit with all readiness that 
there are far too many men voting at present. 
That is an important point; but it is not this point. 
To cut down numbers and make present voters qual- 
ify upon almost any reasonable basis is a proposi- 
tion I would favor ; but, that is not this proposition. 
There is no form of arithmetic by which two mis- 
takes will correct one error. To say that not all 
men now voting are fit to vote is not to say that all 
women now not voting are fit to vote. 

This same fallacious form of reasoning appears 
in a second point. I am trying carefully to keep 
distinct the terms Woman and women; and no 
where else is this so necessary as in what I am now 
coming to. I refer to the contention that women 
are morally better than men. This is the point to 
which nine out of ten rambling discussions come 
down finally as to a basis of fact assumed. More 
demonstrative or less demonstrative Woman may 
be than Man. More sentimental or less senti- 
mental Man may be than Woman. Individual 
women may be and are of a higher grade of almost 
all qualities of excellence than certain individual 
men. But to say that Woman, that is womankind, 



WOMAN SUFFRAGE AND RELIGION 75 

IS any more moral than Man, that is, men of all 
kinds, is quite another matter. 

Yet suppose, for the sake of argument, that both 
these foregoing claims were granted. Suppose it 
were true that all women were better than all men 
and that all Womankind were better than Man as 
a genus; what of it — in the matter under survey? 
To claim that this argues for suffrage is a fair il- 
lustration of a fundamental error: the assumption 
that legislation can cure all legal inequalities which 
we conceive to be moral wrongs. The most com- 
mon defect in legislation is not in the ideal good 
aimed at, but in the lack of practical provision for 
its attainment. The fallacy here is in the belief 
that the conditions most regretted can be removed 
by statute. 

The thing we have gone far astray over in this 
country is in not understanding that the mere passing 
of laws regarding matters, no difference by whom 
enacted, whether by men alone, or by women alone, 
or by both men and women together, is not the 
panacea it is claimed to be for every social ill. We 
have become perfectly obsessed in this country with 
the idea that if we can only get a law passed about 
something that settles the matter. That is the third 



^(> PAPERS AND ESSAYS FOR CHURCHMEN 

I I III II 

point in this group and the last in this series of six 
upon which I take issue. 

And yet we have not touched the heart of a grave 
situation. There remain two important facts. 
They are spoken of by women themselves gleefully 
and in terms of self-congratulation. I refer to two 
conditions, leisure and revolt. These should be con- 
sidered in their inverse order, since the second grows 
out of the first. It is a palpable fact that a great 
multitude of modern women are in revolt. But re- 
volt against what ? They are in revolt against their 
own sex. Woman Suffrage has been defined by a 
noted Suffragist and Socialist, Daniel de Leon, as 
" an integral splinter in the torch that lights the 
path of revolution." And so suffrage leaders and 
speakers generally assume it to be. Feminism is 
all the time in the background of Suffragism. Look 
beyond the vote, regard that even as achieved, and 
you see the real aim and spirit of the New Woman 
movement. The only difference indeed between the 
one and the other is that the Suffragist accepts 
Feminism as the logical consequence of the vote, 
while the Feminist insists upon suffrage as the es- 
sential condition of '' equality." The Suffragist 
and Feminist are not really different people: they 



WOMAN SUFFRAGE AND RELIGION 77 

are merely the same people in different stages. 

In so far as Woman is in revolt, it is not against 
man, but against her own sex. And this revolt, in 
turn, is not against privileges but against duties. 
It is not against the limitations set by man-made 
laws, so-called; it is against the very compulsions 
and necessities of her place in the formal and eternal 
scheme of things. Those special women who are 
most clamorous for their rights are not seeking 
higher, better tasks; they are rather shirking those 
they should perform. Nine out of ten who are 
thus agitating are doing so out of sheer indolence. 
Their revolt arises from their leisure. 

This '' leisure " has been made much of by ad- 
vocates of Woman Suffrage. I would make as 
much of it — and more; but I would do this to 
prove an opposite thesis. We are reminded that a 
certain type of women in this country has, within 
the past two decades, come into a period of tm- 
precedented leisure. And we are told that, there- 
fore, they have time for politics. The first half of 
this is true, both for reasons and along the lines of 
process amply illustrated. But I am sorry for this 
rather than glad of it. I consider this a bane and 
not a boon. It is just because so many women of a 



78 PAPERS AND ESSAYS FOR CHURCHMEN 

given age have so little to do, and because all young 
women — of a certain social class — between the 
ages of maturity and matrimony and, failing matri- 
mony, on indefinitely, have absolutely nothing nor- 
mal to do, that Satan is, as always, finding so much 
mischief for said idle hands. 

Among these women, as among a corresponding 
type of men, I submit that our chief problem in this 
country is not the labor problem but the leisure 
problem. This applies especially to the women of 
the social grade aforesaid. In the struggle of any 
section of society after anything, the question of 
rights comes first ; ^but that question is never allayed 
until the duties of the class in question are clearly 
ascertained. What are these women's duties? 
Are they searching for them? Are they finding 
them ? Are they performing them ? 

As the crown of a whole tendency, there has come 
what may be called the " Emancipation of Woman.'' 
But there is a very important class of women which 
constitutes, I would hold, one of the chief problems 
of society. I have no better term to describe them 
than this : " The unemployed women.'' They toil 
not neither do they spin. They cannot work; yet 
not to seem to work they are ashamed. The result 



WOMAN SUFFRAGE AND RELIGION 79 

is they are *' busy with affairs of little worth, but 
idlers in the best." 

Remember the special class. I do not refer to 
millhands and servant girls who happen to be with- 
out employment. Nor yet do I refer to professional 
women, school teachers, church workers, trained 
nurses, employees in recognized lines of business, 
responsible secretaries, matrons of families and 
mothers of households ; their praise is in the Gospel 
and their work and worth are above all praise. I 
mean that large class of women who belong to the 
upper strata of society who should be doing a 
woman's work in the world, but who are ignorant 
of their duty or uncertain of their vocation. 

I am willing to grant such women their rights; 
but I hope they will not claim them. Moreover, 
if this is what Woman insists upon, she ought to 
know — and, if she does not know, she ought to 
be so told as to be forewarned — that in claiming 
her rights she must abandon her privileges. She 
cannot both eat her cake and have it. I suppose 
such a woman has now the right to do almost any- 
thing conceivable that would injure only herself. 
She has a perfect right to shave, to cut off her hair, 
never to smile, to tattoo her face, disfigure her body, 



8o PAPERS AND ESSAYS FOR CHURCHMEN 

deny her embraces, withhold her favors, and in any 
way she pleases make herself unattractive — and 
unhappy. She has a perfect right to discard skirts, 
don trousers, forswear dressmakers and clothe her- 
self in uniform as dr^b as that of soldiers clad in 
khaki. But I hope she will not do so. 

And this is not because I disregard Woman. It 
is because I esteem her infinitely highly. I hope 
she will not claim all her rights ; I do hope she will 
avail herself of more of her privileges. But she 
cannot do both. In other matters than mere super- 
ficial points of outward appearance, I warn her — 
and that because I am apprehensive in her own in- 
terest. If she clamors for her rights and insists on 
her deserts, she had better have a care or she may 
get them. In this very age, she is transgressing so 
far, along certain lines, that she is shocking the 
masculine world by her very daredeviltry. She is 
playing with fire — and she knows it is fire. She 
is talking, she is acting, she is dancing, she is dress- 
ing, in a way that may yet cost her all too dearly. 

Did I set out to speak of Woman Suffrage and 
Religion and have I missed coming to that point? 
Well, then, this is the point. The effect of this 
whole movement on religion has been bad. It is 



WOMAN SUFFRAGE AND RELIGION 8i 



only bad and always bad. Insofar as '' The Cause '' 
has become a mania or obsession, its committees, 
caucuses and conferences, the visits of commissions 
to State Capitols, petitions to the President and the 
attempts to incorporate planks in political platforms 
— in all of these, this one thing I have observed 
with regret; namely, that the women who take up 
with most ardor this propaganda lay down the 
Church with the same completeness and almost with- 
out exception. Those who become most ardent in 
the service of suffrage drop out of their interest, at 
least as an item of dominant interest, the prime in- 
terest that they once had in religion. This is not 
a dogmatic statement; it is a mere observation of 
fact. Nor is it based on theory; it is based upon 
experience in actual Church work. 

There are a hundred avenues of work open to 
women, work which will rebuild the world, work 
which has behind it a Power that we know to be in- 
vincible. The voices of the prophets of our day 
speak smooth things ; they tell us how to circumvent 
pain, avoid care, rise to calm thoughts and look out 
with joyous indifference on the life of the world; 
but all such voices fail when we stand by the solemn, 
silent realities which bring us into those regions 



82 PAPERS AND ESSAYS FOR CHURCHMEN 

mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmimm^mmmmmmmmmimmmmmmmmmmm^tmmmmmmmmmmmimmmmmmmmm^m-mmmmmmmi^^mmmmmmtmmm 

across which the philosophies of man cannot reach. 
Great thinkers, like Thomas Carlyle, have always 
seen this danger. The prophets of all generations 
have called attention to it. But mankind is not 
made of great thinkers, and there are only a few 
that ever have listened to the true prophets. Those 
who do thus listen can discern, however, that the 
new woman, like the first woman, wants to " be as 
God." She wants to be independent. She despises 
the poor in spirit, the meek and the sorrowful. On 
the contrary, she is shouting : " Blessed are the 
independent, the powerful, the successful. We 
want our rights; not our privileges. We want di- 
rect power; not indirect influence.'' The deepest 
lesson here is that the great purpose of unfolding 
Woman's own calling in all ages is her especial call- 
ing in this one. She must be continually reminded 
that she will attain that divine instinct, not by re- 
nouncing her sex, but by fulfilling it ; by becoming 
true women, and not bad imitations of men; by 
educating her head for the sake of her heart, not her 
heart for the sake of her head; by claiming her own 
divine special vocation as the priestess of Purity, 
Beauty and Love. 



CHAPTER IV 

MEN^S CLUBS AND THE CHURCHES 

Meeting of the Clericus, Philadelphia. 

Examination of a Situation that Claims Much 
Attention from Episcopalians. 

I WROTE this article first more than a dozen 
years ago, for the New York Independent. 
I was resident at that time in New York and 
was connected with the parish-house work 
of St. Bartholomew's Church. Later I recomposed 
it as a paper for the Clericus, in Philadelphia. I 
have scarcely changed it by a dozen words in these 
years since. Experience has led me to hold to all 
its conclusions. They are timely now as then, since 
they have bearing on that special problem, just not 
pressing, of the Church's attitude toward the men 
returned from war. Much tittle-tattle is now being 
talked about this matter. There are ways of deal- 
ing with men that are manly ways. They are the 
only ways that count. Nothing is gained — will 
ever be gained — by cajolery and subterfuge. 



MEN'S CLUBS AND THE CHURCHES 

" If I speak to thee in Friendship's name, 
Thou thinkest I speak too coldly '' ; 

Thomas Moore, 

During some past years a Men's Club has become 
an adjunct of the work of almost every city parish. 
This phenomenon is in part the product of a philoso- 
phy and in part the outcome of a movement. The 
philosophy is founded in the belief that there is 
antagonism between the Workingman and the 
Church ; the movement is a part of that larger move- 
ment under which the club idea has become the dom- 
inating one in modern civic society. 

It is not my purpose to discuss that philosophy. 
Enough has been written recently upon " The 
Church and the Masses/' " The Hostility of Labor- 
ing Men to the Church/' etc. The tone in general 
of the writers of such matter is one of fear and 
apprehension. I believe that fear is groundless and 
that apprehension is needless. However, let the 
fact be assumed and everything connected with it 
granted. It can then at least be set aside. 



MEN'S CLUBS AND CHURCHES 85 

For my purpose is rather to discuss the move- 
ment. It may be said that this movement, resulting 
as it does in the institution o£ so many such clubs, 
is, in Church affairs, the most popular one of the 
day. A discussion of it then is apropos. Such a 
discussion may, I think, most fittingly be set forth 
under four main heads: First, the conditions of 
modern city life which have seemed to make these 
clubs necessities; second, the various forms of or- 
ganization back of them ; third, the specific purposes 
for which the clubs subsist; and, fourth, the extent 
to which they succeed or fail in the accomplishment 
of these purposes. 

In point of method, the discussion must be con- 
fined strictly, note, to the relation of these clubs 
to the Church alone. I have no concern with the 
movement outside the Church or apart from its 
bearing on religion. Following the scheme set 
forth just now, some other institutions must be 
cited; but this is merely in passing and in order to 
prepare the field for the discussion of this one phase 
of the subject: they may not enter as factors them- 
selves in that discussion. Others may consider the 
movement in other relations. It may or may not be 
valuable there; I do not know. As a clergyman, I 



86 PAPERS AND ESSAYS FOR CHURCHMEN 

am concerned only with Workingmen's Clubs and 
the Churches. 

To begin at the beginning. The New York City 
directory gives the names of nineteen hundred 
clubs — social, political, professional, literary, ath- 
letic and what not. Even this number includes only 
such as have a local habitation and a name — neither 
does it count the lodges, regiments, and semi-re- 
ligious organizations such as the Young Men's 
Christian Associations. 

That this same " Club Idea," as applied to Church 
work, is one that is spreading and the movement one 
that is growing is evidenced by the fact that scarcely 
a week passes during which some person does not 
call at the club connected with the Church I chance 
to serve (to cite my own experience alone) to make 
inquiries about this club, intending to make of it 
a pattern elsewhere. Sometimes these callers are 
clergymen, sometimes they are members of commit- 
tees, vestries, sessions, etc. ; now and then they have 
been women and once or twice a bishop. 

One thing that strikes me is the way the work 
appeals to all alike as good; they go home enthusi- 
astic and report that this — this is the very thing 
they need to make their own Church work "go." 



MEN'S CLUBS AND CHURCHES 87 

But another thing, alas! that strikes me is the al- 
most total lack of apprehension by these people of 
the real nature of the work and of the difficulties 
that confront those who attempt to do it. 

The movement, I say, is a general, almost uni- 
versal one. It is by some considered as a fad, to be 
sure; but in reality it has its basis on more firm 
foundations. In the case of the great majority of 
these organizations — that is, those whose members 
are drawn from the middle-class or from among 
the poor — at all events from among workingmen 
— their raison d'etre is found in the intolerable con- 
dition of home-life of those whose dwelling places 
are the city's tenements. 

For there are conditions which make out of such 
a home a place in which it is impossible for men to 
spend their leisure time. This leisure time falls 
largely in the evenings. Rooms are small, families 
are large, neighbors are numerous, and withal the 
quarters are not such that men can spend their even- 
ings there. Besides all this, the average working- 
man has no resources within himself which enable 
him to contrive his own diversions. Thus it is that 
when the spirit of reaction is upon him after his 
day's labor he demands two things : the companion- 



.88 PAPERS AND ESSAYS FOR CHURCHMEN 

ship of his fellows and amusements which are pro- 
vided for him from without. Neither of these he 
can have in his home, but both he can get in a sa- 
loon; therefore to the saloon he resorts. 

Add to this still one other consideration. In each 
generation the average age of marriage is being 
pushed further onward and the percentage of both 
unmarried men and women increases. Within the 
past fifty years the average age of marriage in New 
York State has been pushed upward for men from 
about 22 to 2y, and for women from 19 to about 24. 
Speaking generally, two causes are at work to bring 
about this result : first, the increasing exigencies of 
life; and, secondly, the increasing personal inde- 
pendence of women. This means that, in the case 
of young men, there is, from generation to genera- 
tion, an increasing number of years, the evenings of 
whose days must be passed somewhere outside the 
confines of their homes. 

Now, it was to relieve such conditions as these, 
rather to relieve men from such conditions, that 
various reformers a dozen years ago took up the 
problem of providing for workingmen places in 
which they could spend their evenings apart from 
the sordidness of dirt and free from temptations to 



MEN'S CLUBS AND CHURCHES 89 

vice. The idea was to provide such a place as 
would be in no sense a lodging-house, but rather a 
lodging-home. In bringing to such men such ini- 
tiative from without those who did this did nothing 
novel. They merely did in a novel department of 
life what had always been done in other familiar 
departments. For example, the political club 
which has long been so prevalent among the lower 
and middle classes has always been either the off- 
spring of the political agent or, at best, the mere 
privilege of a public house. 

They realized, also, that the best method to in- 
augurate this as any reform was to lay hold of the 
things in men that are spontaneous and develop these 
along proper lines rather than to restrain them. To 
develop people through their felt wants, to utilize 
spontaneous energy, to seize upon natural instincts, 
to work through the " gang *' consciousness, to turn 
present energy in the direction of future accomplish- 
ment — these were some of the features of the 
method. 

The problem to be solved was how to win 
men over to the preference of excitements which 
were innocent and profitable from those which were 
culpable and ruinous. Hitherto the saloon had sup- 



90 PAPERS AND ESSAYS FOR CHURCHMEN 

plied the former; now the Workingmen's Club 
should supply the latter. 

Those whom I have spoken of as reformers may 
be grouped into four classes. That is to say, there 
are four agencies which stand back of these clubs 
as organized during these years. Accordingly there 
are four kinds of clubs. First, are those which are 
supported and endowed entirely by some one in- 
dividual, as in the case of the Civic Club at 128 
East Thirty-fourth Street, which owes its origin to 
the generosity of Captain Goddard ; or the Working- 
men's Club of Yonkers, the house for which was 
built and endowed by Mr. William F. Cochran. 
Secondly, there are clubs which are subordinate 
branches of some institutional work, such as that 
done at Cooper Union or by the Educational Alli- 
ance. Thirdly, there are clubs which form part of 
the work of Settlements. Among these, the more 
important are at the University Settlement, 184 Eld- 
ridge Street; the Union Settlement, 235 East 104th 
Street. Lastly, there are clubs in connection with 
churches — churches both Catholic and Protestant. 
Of the former the most flourishing is that connected 
with the Church of the Paulist Fathers in West 
Fifty-ninth Street, while of the latter the best 



MEN'S CLUBS AND CHURCHES 91 

known, in order of climax, are those of the Pro- 
Cathedral, 130 Stanton Street; St. George's Church, 
213 East Sixteenth Street, and St. Bartholomew's 
Church, 209 East Forty-second Street. 

Now the first three of these kinds of clubs we 
are not concerned with here. From this point on 
we shall consider only the fourth; that is, clubs in 
connection with churches. When the Church takes 
up this enterprise its object is, whether consciously 
or unconsciously, one alone of two things; either to 
minister to persons in its own membership or to 
minister to those outside. For example, a church 
has among its members a number of men who be- 
cause of limited resources and meager accomplish- 
ments are subject to temptation, in danger of en- 
ticement and in need of some safe place of recrea- 
tion. So that church opens a room in its Church 
House, which " house '' is nowadays almost invari- 
ably a part of its parish machinery, and expects that 
club room to serve as a sort of safe retreat. Either 
this or it reverses that order, and instead of furnish- 
ing to men already members these accommodations, 
furnishes the accommodations to men not members 
of the Church at all. 

If a Church does this its aim, in turn, is again one 



92 PAPERS AND ESSAYS FOR CHURCHMEN 

of two things : either, in order, by furnishing such 
advantages, to enlist the interest of those men in 
that church to the intent that the Church will finally 
draw them into some more close affiliation ; or else, 
ignoring this, to do for those men outside the Church 
something which in itself is intrinsically advan- 
tageous. 

The quarters furnished for any one of these clubs, 
organized for any of those three purposes, are much 
the same. The buildings, rooms, appointments, etc., 
are in the regulation fashion and the activities are 
about the same as those of well conducted men's 
clubs anywhere. Membership may range from one 
to two or three or even half a dozen hundred men. 
There is always a gymnasium ; there is a library filled 
with books and magazines ; entertainments are held, 
perhaps monthly throughout the winter, while be- 
sides all this there may be lectures, smokers, concerts, 
exhibitions, tournaments, etc. 

An annual report of the doings of such a club will 
contain such familiar expressions as these : " The 
pool tournament was the cause of much friendly 
rivalry." " The annual excursion was the event of 
the summer, nearly 3,000 persons being carried on 
three barges chartered by the club, while the profits 



MEN'S CLUBS AND CHURCHES 93 

from the sale of tickets after all expenses had 
been paid were $700." " Ladies' Evenings con- 
tinue to be popular." " Entertainments are con- 
ducted frequently, and the dancing class is well 
attended/' 

But to go back to the three theories. Regarding 
the first of them, that is, that a church should pro- 
vide a '' place of safe retreat,'' I have nothing to 
say. That theory is perfect, and that plan is ideal. 
If in any case it does not succeed it must be be- 
cause in that community such club is not needed. 
Regarding the 'second, that is, that a club shall serve 
as a " feeder for the Church," that it shall "' get men 
interested in the Church," etc., I merely have to de- 
clare that it fails; it fails utterly and it fails always. 
Regarding the third, that is, that the Church, through 
the instrumentality of such clubs, shall do work 
which is entirely apart from its special province, but 
which still has '' intrinsic value of its own," I have 
to suggest some difficulties which may or may not 
appear insurmountable. 

It is noteworthy that the first of these three is the 
method of the Roman Catholic Church. In the 
Church of the Paulist Fathers in West Fifty-ninth 
Street, for example, there is a Men's Club of 700 



94 PAPERS AND ESSAYS FOR CHURCHMEN 

members. The one condition of membership in this 
club is that the members shall first be communicants 
of the Catholic Church. One of the clergy serves 
perpetually as chaplain of the club, and every meet- 
ing is opened with him present in his official ca- 
pacity to read a prayer and pronounce a benediction. 

The theory upon which the second type of club 
is founded is that men will find their physical com- 
fort ministered to, and that this will induce them to 
enter the Church for their more vital welfare. 
Well, in theory this is pleasing, and at first sight 
plausible, but in point of fact it simply does not 
work. Men will follow just so far along that line 
and then will stop. They will take just what you 
have to give; but when, in turn, you ask that they 
shall give themselves, they refuse, courteously, to be 
sure, but none the less emphatically. 

For example, in one club in which there were 130 
members, throughout a whole year, the entrance to 
the building being next door to the entrance of the 
church, just one lone man crossed the threshold 
from the former to the latter during all the year. 
This cannot be answered by the criticism that the 
preaching in that church was poor, or that the clergy 
were remiss in any duty; such was not the case. In 



MEN'S CLUBS AND CHURCHES 95 

another similar men's club during two years not 
one man joined the church. This not because that 
club was not " successful " from every other point 
of view; in fact, it was phenomenally so, the mem- 
bership increasing during that same period from 
seven men to one hundred and seven. In the larg- 
est men's club in New York attached to any church 
— an Episcopal Church — a club with six hundred 
members and a waiting list of two hundred more, 
only one man has been confirmed in three years. 

Finally, regarding the third and last type of club, 
namely, that where the work is attempted for its 
own sake. The object here is not to proselyte, but 
merely to do work which in itself and apart from 
the Church is good. All the work done in this kind 
of club — the features have been noted above — 
looks amazingly attractive from without. To those 
who visit such a club the sole impression is that all 
such work is good, and that just because it is so 
good it is appropriately done when done by the 
Church. It was concerning this method that one 
woman thought that she had said it all when she 
remarked on visiting the club one night, " Why, it's 
capital ! It's a regular Young Men's Christian As- 
sociation with the religion left out." But even here 



96 PAPERS AND ESSAYS FOR CHURCHMEN 

there are some difficulties. Of these the main ones, 
I should say, are two. 

The first is not the one that might be commonly 
expected, namely, to organize the club and to get 
members. That is easy enough. There is a cer- 
tain fascination about the club idea both to those 
who start one and to those who join at first which 
insures it members at the start. The real difficulties 
come subsequently. The first task is to keep out 
factional fights. Every such organization is a 
microcosm of our whole social order. Within each 
club the men are seized with the selfishness of pos- 
session and the passion of exclusion. 

To win for themselves membership in something 
and then to keep somebody out — this appears to 
be the chief end of man. Soon a faction develops, 
and then comes the rule of one leader. His rise is 
the signal for the rise of an opponent; then 
promptly comes a test of strength and a divi- 
sion. Few clubs have ever run throughout their 
second year without disrupting squarely in the mid- 
dle because of this factional spirit, much to the sur- 
prise of promoters of such enterprises, but never 
to the surprise of those who know the traits of such 
society and know the loyalty with which cliques of 



MEN'S CLUBS AND CHURCHES 97 

such men delight to follow each their own leader. 

The second great difficulty is to get the men to 
take up at all with the thing that they most need; 
either to engender anything like initiative upon the 
part of the members themselves or to get them to 
enthuse over the things initiated for them. In other 
words, the problem is first to excite enthusiasm, and, 
secondly, to keep it in bounds. All of this at length 
narrows itself down to a situation where the or- 
ganizer of a club, coming as he does into a sphere 
of life which he does not understand, attempts to 
force his own ideals both of work and play upon 
his new found friends — only to find his plans all 
fail. 

He feels sure that he knows the things that would 
be best to do, but finds that he is helpless to create 
enthusiasm among his neighbors for things which 
he himself would most delight to do. He tries de- 
bates, discussions, musicales and lectures only to 
find that his children of a larger growth do not care 
a fig for such things. But what do they want them- 
selves? They do not know, or if they do, they will 
not say. Or if they do, the things are of such a 
nature that he cannot tolerate them under the same 
roof with a church. 



98 PAPERS AND ESSAYS FOR CHURCHMEN 

In short, they will not do the things he wishes 
done because they see no pleasure in them ; and, vice 
versa, the things they wish to do he thinks are use- 
less or else cannot tolerate. The result is a kind 
of estrangement, which in the end begets apathy. 
Fortunate, indeed, is he if in the end he does not 
come to despair in his attempt to get the men even 
to express themselves frankly in regard to what the 
things are that they will allow him to do for them. 
This is not too dark a picture ; it is an accurate por- 
trayal of a situation. It is not my own experience 
alone; it is the experience of every such club's sup- 
erintendent. 

And, apart from my own experience, there are 
several facts drawn from a wider field which are at 
least significant. It is significant, for example, that 
those who know the situation most thoroughly are 
least of all sure of their own ground in the matter. 
The men who have been most active in originating 
these clubs and most devoted in their service to them 
are the ones who to-day question the validity of the 
whole process with the most searching earnestness. 
They are the least prepared to say that they have 
succeeded. 

Another significant fact is the number of cases 



MEN'S CLUBS AND CHURCHES ^99 

in which the work is being given up. If this at- 
tempt were an unqualified success, would we be 
likely to find the ministers of several churches offer- 
ing for the use of the School Board buildings which 
a dozen years ago were planned for this very work, 
but in which there is to-day much space left vacant? 
Would we find the rectors of Calvary Church and 
of All Souls' Church closing up their Parish Houses 
on the East Side, or would we hear the vestry of 
one other church exclaiming, in the language of one 
of their members, that " Our Parish House has be- 
come a white elephant on our hands"? 

It must begin to be apparent then that, while 
many features of this work are good, there are cer- 
tain points at which its success seems to be at least 
doubtful; certain things pertaining to the movement 
as a whole regarding which grave questions may 
be asked. It must begin to appear wise also that 
some of these things should be pointed out in order 
that the questions thus arising may be taken under 
consideration especially by those who contemplate 
building new houses and starting in upon such en- 
terprises in the new. It is entirely possible that the 
time has come when those who have the largest in- 
terests of the Church at heart would do well to think 



loo PAPERS AND ESSAYS FOR CHURCHMEN 

twice before building more men's club houses if 
they would not have those houses stand some day 
as monuments to their enthusiasm, but as witnesses 
as well to their mistakes. It is certain there are 
questions that should be carefully considered both 
by clergymen before they commit their reputation 
to what may be a doubtful policy and by the laity 
before they commit their money in the same way. 
Of such questions there are several. To be accu- 
rate, I have in mind six. 

Two of these questions are the ones most often 
raised, but these same two seem to me to be but 
minor ones. Let me cite these two, and try to rule 
them out by answering them. First, says some one : 
Are you free from fear of pauperising people whom 
you serve in this way? I believe you are. You 
no more pauperise five hundred workingmen by 
building for them a place of pleasurable resort than 
you pauperise the same number of college students 
by building a library or endowing a professorship. 
A sound principle here is : You never pauperise 
men by giving them anything that is not negotiable. 

Again, says some one : Is it not possible that in 
fitting up luxurious rooms for men to use as club 
rooms you engender in those men a taste for luxury 



MEN'S CLUBS AND CHURCHES loi 

which can never quite be satisfied and which in time 
produces in them a deeper spirit of dissatisfaction? 
This reasoning also I believe is faulty. The very 
best thing that can happen to people who live ha- 
bitually in filth and sordidness is to have created in 
them, in some way, dissatisfaction with their lot. 
The trouble is that so long as they are satisfied they 
will stay there, but if they are dissatisfied enough 
they will make sufficient effort to lift themselves 
out of it. The well known opinion of Ricardo still 
holds good: " The friends of humanity cannot but 
wish that in all countries the laboring classes should 
have engendered in them in some way a taste for 
comfort and enjoyment that they might be stimu- 
lated thus in their exertions to procure them for 
themselves." 

Then there are two other questions. These I 
cannot find it possible to set aside. They are open 
questions. I do not know whether they should be 
answered by yes or no. The first is: Can you 
organize and run successfully any club where you 
bring the initiative from without and are doing some- 
thing for a community instead of having that com- 
munity do something spontaneously for itself? 
This is an open question, not in this connection 



102 PAPERS AND ESSAYS FOR CHURCHMEN 

alone, but in politics as well and elsewhere. It is 
doubtful, for example, whether the spellbinder who 
makes his tour of a ward, coming from the outside 
to do it, ever really creates votes. 

Secondly, can you conduct successfully and make 
permanent any organization which persistently rules 
out both politics and religion — those two things 
which have been the main springs of the most suc- 
cessful voluntary organizations among men always. 
Every one knows that the proud boast of persons 
who organize such clubs as those I have described 
is that they shall not force religion upon the mem- 
bers, and that they shall not allow the partisan pos- 
sibiHties of poHtical discussion. Is it or is it not 
possible to do this and maintain a club alive in any 
permanent form? 

Lastly, there are two questions which seem to me 
to be not open ones but closed. The first of these 
is the question which formed the theme of the criti- 
cism of the Settlement Movement on the lower East 
Side made by Dr. David Blaustein, Superintendent 
of the Educational Alliance, before the School of 
Philanthropic Work recently, to the effect that such 
clubs tend to destroy the unity of family life. The 
burden of his criticism is that too much attention is 



MEN'S CLUBS AND CHURCHES 103 



given to the individual and too little to the family ; 
that the men are given too much attention while the 
women are being neglected, and that in this way 
husbands and wives, parents and children are sepa- 
rated in tastes and sympathies and family life, which 
should be fostered, is broken up. He may have 
gone further than was justifiable in his form of 
statement, especially in regard to the peculiar work 
he criticises; yet, upon the whole, and in theory at 
least, he is right. It is bad and not good upon the 
whole to compromise with conditions which prevail 
within the homes of the city's poor by furnishing 
refuges for the men and leaving the women lonely 
in their households. It would be better to give the 
same attention to the remaking of people's homes — 
at home. 

Second of these two and last of all there is this 
point. It is coming to be seriously questioned by 
those who have given the matter most serious atten- 
tion whether it is not true that about the only pos- 
sible way ever to relieve the horrid conditions of city 
^* slum " life is to annihilate the tenement house. 
On the East Side and West Side of New York City 
there are more people to the square mile than can be 
found anywhere else on the face of the earth. Why 



104 PAPERS AND ESSAYS FOR CHURCHMEN 

— ■— — i— — — 1— — I I I — — i^Mi^— III ,———,—,,——,1—^ 

they are there and not scattered over a country 
which has an average of only twenty persons to the 
square mile is the constant riddle of philanthropists. 
Certain it is that, at present, the free air and bound- 
less space of our farms and fields invite in vain the 
denizens of dingy cities. It would really seem as 
though the very greatest kindness would be to force 
people to abandon that first type of life for the 
second. It is a fact then — a hard fact, to be sure, 
yet nevertheless a fact — that in everything you do 
to make this tenement life endurable you are to that 
extent interfering with a natural law of nature — 
namely, that '' survival of the fittest " which would 
eventually drive men in self-defense to seek some 
other form of habitat. 

In conclusion, it may be in place to state once 
more what was stated at the outset regarding the 
purpose of the study leading to the composition of 
this article. The statements are not meant to be 
dogmatic. I have tried merely to analyze a situa- 
tion and to frame some problems for discussion. 
If the method of that analysis should happen to 
seem sound, and the problems set forth prove to be 
of interest enough to call forth such discussion as 
will aid in their work either Men's Clubs or the 
Churches I shall be repaid. 



CHAPTER V 

THE POOR, WITH YOU ALWAYS 

Written for The Philadelphia Press. 

Study Made Timely by the Interest at this Juncture 
in the Charity Organization Society. 

THIS article was written at the time of a 
notable event, in philanthropic and re- 
ligious circles both at once: the unique 
and informing exhibit by the Society for 
Organizing Charity, in the new Widener Building, 
for ten days. Blase must those be indeed who did 
not find their interest excited and attention held by 
the clever devices, ingenious placards, the printed 
literature and spoken words, together with the ac- 
tual ^' exhibits '' working out before their eyes such 
modern methods of relief for destitution and 
schemes for self-help on the part of the many types 
of unemployed, real living representatives of whom 
were engaged in wielding saws and axes, as though 
in a woodyard, making brooms and caning chairs 
and doing all other things familiar to those who 
have visited such places as Wayfarers' Lodges. 



THE POOR, WITH YOU ALWAYS 

" There are seven reasons why these come to me : five 
loaves and two fishes." 

John Randolph. 

I am moved to make a study of some human 
types and to philosophise a bit about their treatment. 
I begin v^ith some experiences ; I go on to some con- 
clusions. To those v^ho peruse the pages following 
it will, I think, become apparent that the questions 
what to do with people of one pesky type, how to 
escape their machinations and how to improve, even 
though slightly, their condition, are not by any 
means among the least perplexing of all those that 
give the clergyman his anxious days and sleepless 
nights. They present a problem. Can it be solved 
ultimately by the Society for Organizing Charity? 

Few persons, apart from the pastors themselves 
of city churches, have any conception of the number 
of people, total strangers, who, between Sundays, 
visit rectories, manses and parsonages of all the 
city's clergy to ask for help in sums of money, large 
or small. The great majority of total strangers — 



THE POOR, WITH YOU ALWAYS 107 

and it is of them alone I speak — are regular " pan- 
handlers.'' The word is probably not found in any 
dictionary; but, in spite of that, it is a familiar term. 
It denominates the vagrant person, man or woman, 
who accosts you on the street and, with plausible 
story, in pitiful tone, and with tearful plea, asks 
for money in sums ranging through all possible 
amounts. 

The ones who come habitually to clergymen belong 
almost entirely to one class. They are habitual 
vagrants, men with receding foreheads and weak 
chins; women with marred morals and disheveled 
appearance; veterans in villainy and vagrancy, and 
all with no money. The same individuals are usu- 
ally known to every charity association, society, mis- 
sion and bureau, but chief est of all they are known 
to the churches. I have been approached by as 
many as a dozen of these people in a day. Even 
though the personnel of the string of applicants 
changes, the sum total of seeming misery and 
wretchedness continues about constant. Of all the 
stories that they tell here are a half dozen typical 
ones. 

First, there is the man who lays claim to respec- 
tability, who is well dressed and even better spoken, 



io8 PAPERS AND ESSAYS FOR CHURCHMEN 

who has come to the city from somewhere, is on his 
way somewhere and who, having been cheated, 
tricked, waylaid or robbed — or even disappointed 
in the receipt of money from home — is in need of 
something with which, for example, to settle his 
hotel bill or pay car fare for the balance of his jour- 
ney. He may ask to borrow the money. More 
often, he may present a bogus check he wishes to 
have cashed. The reason why he comes to me is 
that he has worked out the details of an imaginary 
acquaintance with someone who, so he pretends, is 
a mutual friend of both of us. 

Next is the man, usually young, who confesses 
crime and makes of this confession the basis of his 
plea for help. Sometimes he is a native citizen; 
more often he is some prodigal off from home on 
a spree, who, having spent or drunk or gambled an 
allowance had from home, comes here to plead for 
something with which to make a new start. Inas- 
much as he knows that I know and have respect or 
affection for his father, he attempts to traffic in 
that affection or respect. 

Third, there are those who may be classified un- 
der the heading '' The Shabby Genteel." These 
people base their plea upon the fact that they have 



THE POOR, WITH YOU ALWAYS 109 

once been far up in the world, and now, for some 
strange reason, are as far down in it. They look 
back to the time before they met reverses, and, in 
proportion as such distance always lends enchant- 
ment, they embower their past with glory. Their 
attempt is to persuade me that the world, as epito- 
mized in the Church, and as represented by the 
clergy, owes them a living. 

Fourth, there are those who ask, not for money 
outright, but for some position or form of employ- 
ment. These all express their eagerness to do 
everything and their willingness to do anything. 
That is, they do so until one actually finds them 
work. Then, alas, they always fail to appear on 
the appointed morning. These are members of a 
great and growing class. 

Fifth, there are those whose story is that they 
have long been out of employment, but have found 
a chance at last to go to work at once if only they 
could get enough money to redeem their tools from 
pawn or to get their linen from a laundry, or to pay 
their passage to some point where work is waiting 
for them. 

Lastly, there are those who come ostensibly in the 
interest of a family at home. These all tell tragic 



no PAPERS AND ESSAYS FOR CHURCHMEN 

tales involving penury and suffering, and in a tone 
of importunity. They even introduce, upon occa- 
sion, threats of violence or hints at suicide. All be- 
long to the same class. There is a confraternity 
among them. The truth is that, on the benches in 
the parks, in lodging houses, in the public wood 
yards, etc., the names of persons and places and 
times, from whom and where and when, help may 
be asked and received, are told or sold or passed 
around. 

The number of these stories that are actually un- 
true and the number of these cases that are out and 
out frauds is simply a question of figures and facts. 
It is enough — if anything can be enough — to 
make one lose his faith in human nature, to count 
up the number of times that he has found himself 
deceived. Not one story out of ten of those that 
have been told to me within a year was true, even 
in general outline; while not one out of fifty was 
accurate in its details. It is unfortunate that such 
conditions should be possible. But such simply is 
the case. One must proceed upon the principle that 
no story by any total stranger is true until it is 
proven so. 

One naturally comes at length, after manifold 



THE POOR, WITH YOU ALWAYS iii 

experiences, therefore, to invent some tests that he 
may use to prove the truth or falsity of stories told. 
The first and perhaps the simplest of these is to use 
the telegraph or telephone. Even to offer to use it 
will often suffice. To ask the person who has told 
the stolen-pocketbook story, for instance, to come 
back at a later hour when there will have been time 
for a reply to come confirming the story. He will 
not come. But neither will a satisfactory reply 
have come. 

Again, coincidence is of importance. A story 
that might be believed if told only once, becomes 
hard to believe when five men in one day stand in 
one's presence and tell it almost verbatim. I have 
heard -some of the stories as frequently as that. 
Still again, it is disappointing to hear a man tell a 
tragic story and to see him sigh while telling it and 
then, three minutes later, see him laughing at some 
simple joke you test his solemn mood by telling him. 
Lastly, the worst possible sign is, after you have 
given him money, to have him protest vehemently 
that he will return it. The vehemence with which 
this protestation is made is the very measure of cer- 
tainty that the return will not be made. 

To be sure, the condition of some of the persons 



112 PAPERS AND ESSAYS FOR CHURCHMEN 

telling certain of these stories, is often as pitiful as 
any story, true or false, could make it. He is in 
need of help in any case? Yes. But just how can 
one help him? One is impressed with the curious 
helplessness of certain of these types of people. 
There are those whose stories are true in every de- 
tail, but whose stories when told leave one abso- 
lutely helpless to help those who tell them. This is 
because the people themselves are so helpless. 
There are those whose helplessness is the helpless- 
ness of children. When out of work they have no 
ability to rehabilitate themselves. This inability 
may be partly cause and partly effect. The effect 
of serving as mere servants year in and out is bad. 
The cause lies in that general type of disposition 
which made them choose such work as a life work. 
There are also certain characteristics which mark 
these people as a class and distinguish all of them 
from any other class. One thing is the way they 
all take it for granted that the world owes them a 
living. I often think, in this connection, of the 
reply of Horace Greeley to one such: *' My dear 
sir, that remains to be proven.'' Another is the 
way likewise they all assume that the Church ought 
to help them. The very gait with which they amble 



THE POOR, WITH YOU ALWAYS 113 

in and the very attitude in which they sit down on 
the nearest chair, are both significant. Their firmly 
fixed, although unuttered, conviction seems to be: 
*' Yes, Tm in trouble, but it's up to you to get me 
out/' One other characteristic is the strong aver- 
sion of them to all public institutions — especially 
to the Charity Organization Society. 

This, of course, is for abundant reason. They 
have all been there already. They have long ago 
worn out their welcome. It is with these that most 
captious criticism originates of this Society. Here 
therefore I drop this descriptive narrative of types 
and take up once again the narrative of that event 
we set out by referring to: the Exhibit in the 
Widener Building. 

On the wall were many placards giving, some 
advice, some information, some meant to be as edu- 
cational regarding the purposes themselves of this 
much discussed society as others contained facts 
and figures illustrating needs and opportunities. 
Some tabulated contributions and some showed why 
money in such sums is needed and how all the money 
in hand is spent annually. Some graphically illus- 
trated, by the aid of charts and diagrams, the way 
the city is divided into its sixteen districts, each with 



114 PAPERS AND ESSAYS FOR CHURCHMEN 

its own office, calling in all for the paid services of 
82 experts who outline tasks for the 350 Volunteer 
Visitors. 

In a prominent position, on a wall abaft the en- 
trance and the exit both at once, in order that no 
one might come or go without the fullest, frankest 
information on the vital point of money, was a huge 
circular diagram cut by radii in four unequal seg- 
ments. This was intended to show " how your dol- 
lar was spent last year." The total amount of 
money administered by the society, it seems, was 
$207,219.70. It was proportioned and divided ac- 
curately thus : First, administration, rents, postage, 
printing, publicity and appeals, mendicancy cam- 
paign, bureau of information and miscellaneous, 
$45,041.04. Second, district workers, visitors and 
services to the needy, $40,893.50. Third, Way- 
farers' Lodge, shelter, food, work and social 
workers, $51,149.98. Fourth, material relief, 
$70,135.18. 

These are large figures. Any society that solicits 
this amount of money in the form of voluntary con- 
tributions assumes a responsibility, of course, com- 
mensurate in size and seriousness to prove the worth 
of the service they render the community. To make 



THE POOR, WITH YOU ALWAYS 115 

the facts in this connection plain has been the very 
purpose of this exhibition. It is true that they have 
a large task to justify so large a portion of what 
might be termed " overhead charges/' Especially 
they need to justify the large proportion of this 
total of $200,000 which is eaten up each year in 
'' salaries." Many a head has been scratched as this 
half hundred thousand visitors this week passed 
that placard in endeavors to work out the problem 
just how it can pay to spend all but $70,000 of a 
$200,000 budget to administer the $200,000. More 
than sixty per cent, appears to be consumed in the 
cost of '' administration." 

To find fault with this is to misunderstand the 
mission of this worthy organization. To be critical 
here is to forget entirely that this society is not 
itself primarily a charitable institution in the sense 
of existing to dole out charitable funds piecemeal. 
It is strictly a Society for Organizing Charity. It 
is an agency whose very purpose is to correlate and 
direct those minor agencies whose minor task it is, 
each one in its own way, to distribute alms to its 
own clientele. 

For my part, the fault I find is not that only 
$70,000 was spent in ^' material relief," but that 



ii6 PAPERS AND ESSAYS FOR CHURCHMEN 

any of the $200,000 was spent in this way. Herein, 
and here only, is this organization's weakness. The 
weakness in turn is a concession to popular clamor, 
a yielding to temptation, a futile endeavor to do tv/o 
things at once. It is that very division of endeavor 
that to some extent defeats accomplishment along 
either one line alone. It is not on the word Charity 
that most emphasis ought to be laid ; it is well within 
its function when it tells subordinate societies just 
what to do and how to do it, i.e. Organization. 

In the realm of clear thinking, in the field of mere 
theory, in the study of charity as a subject of study, 
the Charity Organization Society is right. To give 
alms indiscriminately is to abet the crime of begging. 
To give to strangers is to encourage vagrancy and 
to confirm the recipients in penury. To give a cup 
of coffee to a hungry man is not to change the man 
but only to transmute the coffee. If the fault lies 
with the man to whom one gives one loaf of bread 
to-day, the same will all have to be done again 
to-morrow. 

And the fault does lie with the man — with all 
the men who are likely to be in a '' Bread Line.'' It 
is possible, of course, to make a rough distinction 
between worthy and unworthy types, between the 



THE POOR, WITH YOU ALWAYS 117 

man who is out of a job because he can't find one 
and the man who is *' willing to work but won't ; '' 
between those who are for the time being down and 
out and the conventional, familiar types of pan- 
handlers and rounders. But the fact remains that, 
back of all these cases as they appear at the moment, 
there is a life story each as long at least as the num- 
ber of years up to the point of manhood; for these 
men are all full grown and have all had the years 
of man's estate. 

I am perfectly familiar with the argument that 
" any man who is willing to beg for the price of his 
bread is hungry," and that any man who is so des- 
titute as that needs at least food enough to keep him 
living. Perfectly true. But it is just because of 
the extremity of his need that he needs something 
more. He needs bread ? Yes. But it is only giv- 
ing him a stone to give him bread alone and not to 
give him such help as apparently he needs to enable 
him to get bread of his own and by his own initiative. 

This is no more true of bread lines than it is, 
for instance, of free ''lodging houses;" it is true 
of all places that afford free shelter for the un- 
sheltered and of all methods of giving continuous 
^.Ims. The very lodging house as an institution is 



ii8 PAPERS AND ESSAYS FOR CHURCHMEN 

as inadequate a solution of an age-long problem as 
that kind of hostelry itself is meant to provide only- 
passing comfort and temporary accommodation to 
the patrons of its hard beds and its dingy dining 
rooms. That kind of aid can only be at best occa- 
sional. It ought only to be incidental to some wider 
survey of the causes that produce these " cases.'' 

I believe, and confidently, that the time has come 
when the State ought to assume here a responsi- 
bility. It ought to do this, not primarily out of 
charity, but of sheer necessity. No other agency 
is in the position to do that which is needed with 
the requisite authority and with the long-drawn-out 
consistency which alone can work remedial results. 
That time has come late in the order of events; 
but it has now arrived. It has come with the advent 
in our thinking of a catalogue of qualities which alto- 
gether make up human nature. That nature, so far 
as the State is concerned, is now admitted on all 
hands to be three-fold. Every man has a physical 
constitution ; he has a mental equipment and he has 
an economic or social relationship. 

Now, these men, all of them, in this class under 
survey, worthy and unworthy, sinned against and 
sinning, are not up to the mark economically. They 



THE POOR, WITH YOU ALWAYS 119 

are socially sick. In those matters all that make 
for thrift, economy, provision for the rainy day, 
prevision in contracting matrimonial alliance, bur- 
densome unnecessary families to support, these mor- 
tals have no power of calculation in expenditures of 
wages. Slouchy, slovenly, incompetent, improvi- 
dent, not vicious, merely vacuous — they are socio- 
logically unfit. They may or may not be afflicted in 
the other two regards. They may be mentally or 
physically sound or unsound. That is, for the mo- 
ment, neither here nor there. They are, not only 
for the moment, but for the year or for many years, 
social invalids and in need of some kind of '' treat- 
ment.*' 

I say this conception comes late. It has come, all 
the same. And it has come in logical order. 

First the man who was sick in his body claimed 
consideration. As the result, the hospital as an in- 
stitution came into existence. And, while it is not 
so long ago that this happened, it has now happened 
so generally that a time when there was none has 
almost been forgotten. There were founded State 
hospitals. 

Next, and so much more recently that almost out 
of memory we can trace back the origin, began that 



I20 PAPERS AND ESSAYS FOR CHURCHMEN 

kind of regard for the mentally sick which made 
them, not objects of cruelty, but instead subjects for 
custody. Insanity became a disease instead of a 
crime, and the mentally sick man was taken out of 
jail and put in a State asylum. 

The time has now come to regard in somewhat the 
same way the third class, a class equally distinct and 
definite. And it is the State that ought to deal with 
these who are in an equal degree its wards. These 
bread line types of men, both worthy and unworthy, 
I repeat again — for this is an arbitrary line of de- 
marcation and these groups first apparently two be- 
came one — are economically sick. They are so- 
cially invalid. They could be cured, a large percen- 
tage of them, but if they cannot they certainly should 
be confined. And even though this were done at 
large expense it would be at as large a saving in the 
end to us who are ourselves the State. 



CHAPTER VI 

THE CHURCH AND LABOR AGITATION 

My Compliments to the Bolsheviki. 

Composite of Three Articles^ Written in That Many 
Years for The Philadelphia Press. 

THIS very morning that I reach this point 
in compilation of my manuscript, the 
newspapers announce the diaboHcal out- 
rages attempted last night in seven 
American cities, apparently a sequel to the unsuc- 
cessful May-day attempt, when infernal machines 
were mailed broadcast to Government Officials and 
men prominent in pubHc life, to Members of Con- 
gress and the Department of Justice. Among these 
places was the Catholic Church of Our Lady of 
Victory in West Philadelphia. This is pretty das- 
tardly. And it is coming very near home. It is 
time for someone to speak the Church's mind. 
Throughout the chapter, I have used the phrases 
Labor Agitation and Labor Agitator, as distinct 
from Labor Union and Labor Leader. Where the 
two groups intermingle is the point in question. 



THE CHURCH AND LABOR AGITATION 

"Whose end is destruction, whose God is their belly, 
whose glory is in their shame/' 

Philippians 3 : 19. 

As it happens, I am a clergyman. By that same 
token I should sympathize with all who are down- 
trodden or oppressed or overworked. As it hap- 
pens, however, I am not one of those who believe 
that the average workingman is overworked. I de- 
cline to sympathize here without one eye on the facts. 
I am satisfied that the mass of working people do 
not work as hard as do some others in the profes- 
sions instead. I am quite sure some of them work 
fewer hours and draw more wages than what serves 
the semblance of work on their part deserves. 

And yet, Labor as a class, has recognition. As a 
cult, it has its creed. And, for its future, it has its 
own prophets and its prophecies. This calls for 
compliment; it also calls for criticism. The very 
thing I most lament is that it is so distinctive a class. 
It is questionable whether it has loyalty to much 
outside itself. It is lamentable when the Church, 



THE CHURCH AND LABOR AGITATION 123 

the State, the Family, all as institutions, have to take 
subordinate positions to the Union. 

I have always felt that where such terms are used 
as " the laboring class," '' industrial workers," " em- 
ployers," '' capitalists," etc., they should be regarded 
as descriptive and not as definitive terms. And for 
this reason: In a country where everybody works, 
professional and laboring people alike, employer and 
employed, there is only one distinction — that is, 
between those who work eagerly and those who 
work listlessly; in fine, between the alert and the 
indolent, between those who feel and assume re- 
sponsibility and those who shirk it. The line of 
distinction between the working " class," therefore, 
and any other class in this country is a wholly arti- 
ficial and imaginary line. There are practically no 
Qther kinds of people than working people. Most 
employers whom I know work eighteen hours a day 
to their employes' eight. It is a different kind of 
work ; but it is even a more intense grade of work. 

There is only one line of distinction also in their 
traits or attributes. They are either reasonable or 
unreasonable. That is all. What is needed, then, 
is not so much a classification into workers and 
others, as into thinkers and thoughtless. This is a 



.124 PAPERS AND ESSAYS FOR CHURCHMEN 

horizontal rather than a lateral line of cleavage and 
would place many members of both the old groups 
in each of the new. There are many phases of the 
present industrial condition in the United States 
which cry aloud for immediate remedy. Certain 
special problems are for the attention of special 
groups ; but certain others cannot be settled by either 
capital or labor alone; nor yet by both of them to- 
gether; the people at large must assume a distinct 
share in the responsibility for their solution. To do 
this the people must think. They must be sympa- 
thetic ; but also they must be earnest and honest. 

The news columns of the daily papers during the 
past week have furnished reports of an occurrence 
tragic in the last extreme. The facts involved are 
grewsome and the circumstances most unsavory. 
But, worse than this, has been certain discussion of 
them and attempts, upon the part of criminals, to 
compel sympathy by calling murderers by the mis- 
taken name of martyrs. These facts, therefore, 
call for stem scrutiny and certain theories involved 
call for some plain speech also. And from nowhere 
do they call more loudly than from the pulpit and 
in the name of Religion. 

Such is the maudlin thinking of so many of our 



THE CHURCH AND LABOR AGITATION 125 

I I —1^— 111 III ) 

generation who consider such matters all as open 
questions that they ask : '' Which side are you 
on?'' It is true, there is a time for sympathy in 
every quarrel. But there is also a time for cen- 
sure. Anyone will be sorry for these poor deluded 
creatures ; sorry for their ignorance, and sorry, most 
of all, for their delusion. But there is a time as 
well to speak the strongest words of censure that 
the English language furnishes. 

There are words, therefore, plain words of stem 
rebuke, that should be spoken. And they should be 
spoken by the spokesmen of Religion. There are 
still things in the world that go by the strong name 
of sin. Murder and arson, and riot and anarchy, 
bloodshed and threatening, sabotage, syndicalism 
and all such devices of Satan are sin. No end justi- 
fies these means. No matter furthered by these 
methods can have the consideration of those who 
esteem themselves above the beasts that perish. It 
is here that the distinction must be drawn. 

In fact, this sharp distinction draws itself. There 
are human beings who aspire upward, and there are 
those who do not. There are those who believe 
there is a God in Heaven — and who fear there is a 
Hell. These are the religious, in some form and in 



126 PAPERS AND ESSAYS FOR CHURCHMEN 

some measure. On the other hand there are those 
who deny that there is either angel or spirit. They 
are earthy, sensual, devilish. The stage may as well 
be set. Alignment may as well be made and 
methods recognized and reckoned with. This is the 
issue. 

I am grieved — or would be — to think that the 
clergy have no right left, neither voice with which to 
exercise it, no right to speak stern words denouncing 
sin. I would resign my ofifice if I might not speak 
of sins when I discover them, and without mincing 
words. The plain unvarnished truth is, there is not 
one of the Ten Commandments that does not seem 
to be broken by all bands of anarchists wherever and 
whenever they foregather. 

I have been impressed by the confusion in our 
thinking, by the breaking down of standards, by the 
vanishing of categories of right judgment, by the 
maudlin, poor, weak sentimentalism which exoner- 
ates the wicked and excoriates the righteous, which 
sees palliation in all such occurrences and which 
seeks judgment nowhere, which allows one's sym- 
pathy to blind his judgment and is sorry where it 
ought to be more isane. I lament the sophistry by 
which so many grant that evil may be done that good 



THE CHURCH AND LABOR AGITATION 127 

may come, and all the casuistry that would make the 
worse appear the better reason. 

I cannot help but feel that here and here alone — 
at this point where sin is the subject of survey — 
is the point at which clergymen can touch, or ought 
to touch, that whole complex and complicated thing, 
the labor problem. Labor is an abstract term; but 
laborers are concrete persons. It is said that cor- 
porations have no souls ; but individuals still have. 

We have watched individual protest develop into 
socialistic utterances; we have seen green socialism 
turn into red anarchy, and we have witnessed this 
last turn into white-hot syndicalism, sabotage, de- 
structive, wanton, wicked attacks upon property, 
and last, attacks on all hands upon human life. 
These bring me to a point where, as a priest, I make 
my protest. 

And I wish more priests would do the same. I 
wish they would do this ; but I wish they would do 
only this. I wish they would hold to their one spe- 
cial task. In their hope to serve their fellows, they 
are entering to-day too many of the fields extraneous 
and other than their own. There are other fields 
and other points at which this " problem " calls on 
other men to study and to help to solve it. The 



128 PAPERS AND ESSAYS FOR CHURCHMEN 

time is upon us when there is need for each one to 
do his part. He can do it best by doing faithfully 
his one set, special, task. 

Who then shall meet this situation? And how? 
I reply, there is need for all, but for each one in his 
special field. My point is, the problem has an im- 
portant religious aspect. There are those who, in 
this conflict, are becoming irreligious. In their 
struggle to feed best their bodies, there is a class of 
men who are starving their souls. In the attempts 
of some to fatten, and of others even to fill their 
purses, both are committing spiritual suicide. I 
wish that religionists would press their case as 
pointedly as do economists, philanthropists, states- 
men and financiers. 

I am not minimizing a problem ; I am only trying 
to specialize it. I am not blind to a situation ; I am 
trying rather to bring my one dim candle to its dark 
solution. But I must needs light that candle at 
the only flame I have. As a priest before the altar, 
I am not a workman in a mill or foundry. As a 
preacher in the pulpit, I am not a statistician in an 
office or a magnate in a counting house. As a 
pastor of a congregation, I am not necessarily quali- 
fied to know the duties of the foreman in a steel 



THE CHURCH AND LABOR AGITATION 129 

mill or the operatives in a factory. As the rector 
of a parish, I am less and not more qualified to 
counsel a labor commission or to give advice to 
Congress. 

And there is a point that is more professional 
still. As an almoner of gifts to feed the poor, I am, 
by inexperience, out of the class who strive by com- 
petition. As a shepherd of souls, I am willing to 
leave some things to some others, and that because 
they know their business just as I ought to know 
mine. The one isingle thing I must insist on is 
that, whether employer or employed, there are things 
one may do that are right and some things that he 
must not do, and simply because they are wrong. 
They are eternally, utterly, absolutely, unquestion- 
ably and unchangeably wrong. He may not do them 
because they are sins. And that's the end of it. 
This, so far as the priest is concerned, is the end of 
the whole matter as it has been the beginning. 

It would seem as though we ought to see things 
here in a straight line, and to a sane conclusion. 
And we would, if we had not almost entirely lost, 
as a people, the ability to do three elemental, funda- 
mental things. We have lost almost utterly the 
sense of perspective in judging what are the impor- 



130 PAPERS AND ESSAYS FOR CHURCHMEN 

tant points in any situation ; we have lost, or rather 
most of us have failed ever to acquire — and that 
by our faulty systems of education — the ability 
to think in a straight line; and we have so confused 
common sense with sentiment, mentality with sen- 
timentality, philanthropy with justice and easy go- 
ing charity with real stern Christian living, that we 
have lost our right instinct for religion. 

There are three great organs of public instruc- 
tion; the College, the Church and the Newspaper. 
They are only vaguely aware that anything is afoot. 
And what they do know they call by false names. 
They have for a generation been in a conspiracy, 
unconsciously, to engender in us a state of confu- 
sion on this matter. They have brought us to a 
pass where we appear to be incapable of discerning 
fact from fiction, truth from error and eternal verity 
from foolish falsehood. Let us note them in their 
inverse order. 

If the public press of the whole country for one 
generation, or for one year, for that matter; if the 
daily papers and the monthly magazines would 
simply stop, stop absolutely and consistently, print- 
ing reports of such outrages as give coveted and 
relished prominence and much enjoyed, albeit evil, 



THE CHURCH AND LABOR AGITATION 131 

notoriety to those who make such speeches, plan 
such outrages and commit such dastardly deeds; if 
they imposed the mere penalty of disregard, indif- 
ference and silence; if in short, they made nothing 
of this, there would be nothing to it. Your agi- 
tator thrives on agitation and your anarchist feeds 
on reports of anarchy. Your Industrial Worker of 
the World is the one man in the community who will 
not work industriously. Work is the last thing 
he seeks. Leisure is the thing he flies to. Laziness 
is the motive that prompts him. Talk is his tool 
of incitement. And to be talked about is the very 
relish and enjoyment of his profitless existence. 
The first thing our people need is the sense of per- 
spective. 

If, in our system of education we would encour- 
age thinking; if the schools of the country would 
stop, for one generation, the mere memoriter sys- 
tem of conning lessons by rote, of mistaking in- 
formation for education, knowledge for intelligence, 
and say-so for think-so; if they would discover 
that the estimate of things is wrong which places 
mere facts in importance above the interpreta- 
tion of facts, our people would recover by and 
large that art, which in this generation is almost en- 



132 PAPERS AND ESSAYS FOR CHURCHMEN 

tirely a lost art, the art of thinking for themselves. 
The old system pursued in a former generation, in 
the country school-house, for example, where there 
were almost no text books and where but three 
branches, reading, writing and arithmetic, were 
taught, produced more virile mental processes, more 
vigorous intelligence, much saner comprehension, 
far keener powers of perception and greater ability 
to institute, devise, originate and to discriminate, 
than does our average educational institution to-day 
over-equipped as it is with every appliance and un- 
der-provided with any sense of individuality. This 
second thing our people need : the power of a pre- 
vious age to think clearly. 

And last we come to the pith and marrow of the 
matter. We need a revival of religion. We talk 
of industrial revivals? One thing we need far 
above that. We need a new and vital understand- 
ing of the nature and the purpose of religion. We 
are trying to elevate humanity by an increase of 
wages ? That may be necessary ; but it is not funda- 
mental. We forget that man cannot live by bread 
alone. There are worse things than hunger and 
cold and nakedness and famine and the sword. 
They are blindness of heart, dullness of conscience 



THE CHURCH AND LABOR AGITATION 133 



and deadness of soul. The age of faith is past? 
Yea, verily. The manna which has fed the human 
spirit for so long has been abandoned for grosser 
food. No longer do men seek recreation and re- 
freshment at those exhaustless springs whose waters 
heal with the gifts of patience, of confidence and 
of love. There is little enough religion in the 
world to-day. That is true. But among those 
forces which organize social discontent its absence 
is most utter. 

Of these latter there is this much to be said. And, 
once again, this is to be said in the name and by the 
spokesman of Religion. Hear these words that 
ring with hard sense and that echo with the trumpet 
tone of Truth itself. 

*' The ' Justice ' that is ever on your lips and on 
your banners is the thing that you decline to exercise. 
You do part of the work? Yes. And you claim all 
the profits. You would direct the business of the 
country and divide its earnings ? You are too in- 
different and indolent to frame its policies and you 
absolutely decline to share its losses. You hate 
others wjio are more successful? Yes. Because 
they are more industrious, wiser and more prudent 
than you. The more successful even of yourselves 



134 PAPERS AND ESSAYS FOR CHURCHMEN 

I I ' ■— — III I I 

slam the door of opportunity in the faces of those 
who follow. We are all of us the materialist chil- 
dren of a century of industrialism; but, among you, 
that materialism grows most rank. When you have 
bread, you cry for meat. When you have water, 
you cry for wine. Shorter hours, more money, bet- 
ter food, more play, less work, more living and less 
earning of a living — these are your clamorous de- 
mands; never more learning, more longing, more 
beauty, more service, more sacrifice, more of any of 
the things that make life most worth living. You 
complain of being overworked? You lament that 
you are underpaid ? Well, I have watched you. I 
work eighteen hours a day and lament that there are 
not more hours in which I might pursue my calling. 
You? You loiter and loll and call it work, eight 
hours a day, and think it hardship that you have not 
longer time in which to loaf. I cannot speak your 
language. Perhaps you cannot read mine. But I 
tell you frankly, I am honest, you are not. I am 
industrious, you are evasive. I am earnest, you are 
trifling. I am serious and you are sacrilegious.'' 

Recently I have looked in upon the Thirty Fourth 
Annual Convention of the American Federation of 
Labor, heralded by the converting of Broad Street 



THE CHURCH AND LABOR AGITATION 135 

into a veritable Great White Way and meeting last 
Monday for its twelve days' session in Horticultural 
Hall. 

Any assembly of 800 delegates, purporting to 
bear petitions from two million men and women, 
presided over by a man of national and international 
note or notoriety — depending on who passes judg- 
ment — setting themselves the task of discussing 
more than one hundred new resolutions and reports 
of as many old committees on such diverse subjects 
as those ranging from child labor laws to old age 
pensions, from an attack on ship registry laws to the 
repeal of the vagrancy statutes, from the Colorado 
mine troubles to the censorship of moving picture 
plays, from occupational diseases to the size of union 
labels, from the Mexican turmoil to world peace in 
Europe, from socialism to individualism, from syn- 
dicalism to industrialism, from demands for the 
formation of a new political labor party to the sanc- 
tioning of the new law exempting labor organiza- 
tions from prosecution under the Sherman anti- 
trust act, from the scrutinizing of the progressive- 
ness of Democratic to Republican parties, from 
recommendations for better workmen's compensa- 
tion acts to methods of more healthful ventilation in 



136 PAPERS AND ESSAYS FOR CHURCHMEN 

factories and mills, its sessions opened with an ad- 
dress of welcome by the Mayor, who presented to 
the chairman the keys of the city, is a matter of no 
small news interest. 

Nor has it less fascination for all honest-minded 
citizens and earnest-hearted helpers in a dozen spe- 
cial fields ; for example, for all editorial writers, for 
political reformers, educators and philanthropists, as 
well as, certainly not least, but most, all professing 
religionists, and, of these, first and foremost, all the 
city's clergy. 

From the standpoint, therefore, in general, of one 
of a million and a half citizen-spectators, but more 
in particular from that of one of the thousand or- 
dained ministers of all denominations, I wish for 
myself that someone would describe this meeting to 
me for just what it is. From the viewpoint of one 
interested, I wish someone could portray to me the 
aims and objects of this labor federation, could de- 
tail its present efforts and its past accomplishments, 
decipher its ambiguous endeavors, justify its meth- 
ods and delineate its motives upon moral grounds. 

What is it that Labor wants? How can the 
Church and the Clergy help ? Are ambitions of the 
agitators laudable, are their methods permissible? 



THE CHURCH AND LABOR AGITATION 137 

Are they willing to help the Church ? And do they 
wish for the Church to help them ? 

The question that emerges is the point blank ques- 
tion whether anything conceivable that the Church 
can do, has done, has tried or is now trying to do, 
can ever make any impression on the sodden senti- 
ments and the perverted minds of people of this 
whole composite I Won't Work type; whether the 
attempt of Church people at compromise and their 
anxiety to serve, their conferences and concessions, 
their parley and their prayers, their expression of 
charitable sentiments and their appointment of fra- 
ternal delegates to such associations and societies as 
have destruction for their object, unprofitable leisure 
for their aim and unearned increment for their en- 
deavor, may not all be efforts misdirected; whether 
much good sympathy is not being thus wasted and 
whether the many long-suffering and patient at- 
tempts at amelioration are not all unworthy of the 
Church and whether Churchmen who coquette with 
these societies are inconsiderate of facts that ought 
to be faced and blind toward sin that should be cen- 
sured. 

For, when all the elements in our modem society, 
intermingled and confused as they are to be sure, 



138 PAPERS AND ESSAYS FOR CHURCHMEN 

are reduced and simplified, they come down in the 
end to two. These are as opposite as are zenith and 
nadir poles and so conflicting as to be absolutely 
irreconcilable. On the one hand, there are the con- 
structive forces ; on the other hand are the destruc- 
tive. In one group are all those individuals and in- 
stitutions which are redemptionist in their endeavor ; 
in the other, there are those that are iconoclastic and 
incendiary. Of the first, the Christian Church has 
always stood, and must stand, at the head. Of the 
second, all anarchistic and other associations that 
preach and practice violence are in the forefront. 
These latter have no purpose of construction; they 
are all destructive — nothing else. Of the former, 
the chief work is constructive — this above every- 
thing else. Between those two endeavors there can 
be no compromise. 

It is true, in turn, that the Church's effort to ac- 
complish this should be two- fold; it ought to minis- 
ter to the bodies as well as to the souls of men. As 
a further detail, it happens also to be true that the 
Church does both these things. It does the former 
in a very marked degree. That is true. What is 
not true is that those destructive forces, anarchistic 
cults, destructionist societies, give any credit to the 



THE CHURCH AND LABOR AGITATION 139 

Church for this or would be satisfied or speak ap- 
proval or applause no matter how much of this work 
of helpfulness the Church would do or try to do. It 
is of no use, therefore, to say anything to them. 
But it ought to be of value, it should be a source of 
pleasure and of gratification to all sane and serious 
persons, to understand and realize how much the 
Church is doing, how hard it is trying and with what 
success. 

For, I submit with much temerity and yet in all 
sincerity, this thesis, that the whole labor situation 
is being made worse rather than better by a lot of 
those, clergymen as well as others, who are trying to 
rectify it; that some problems are being made the 
more unsolvable by some of those who are busiest 
trying to solve them ; the whole outlook the worse be- 
clouded and obscured by some who think they are 
clarifying it. 

I have industriously read through the findings of 
three different Social Service Commissions of that 
many federations of churches, being special reports 
on labor troubles in Colorado. This whole task is 
most disheartening. I am impressed with the ram- 
bling style and maudlin tone of so much of the liter- 
ature, both in the name of organized labor and 



140 PAPERS AND ESSAYS FOR CHURCHMEN 

equally so by commissions of Church people and 
other reformers. The first start out with such false 
assumptions; the second reason to conclusions in 
terms of such glittering generalities. 

There is one patent fact to which both parties are 
inclined to shut their eyes ; that is, to the deteriora- 
tion of labor itself in the generation just now pass- 
ing. I do not say in the moral quality of the labor- 
ers. That is a different matter. I am not raising 
— at least at this point I am not — any question of 
moral deterioration. I am not speaking here of 
anything that concerns character, although to pass 
that point is not to say that it is settled. I am speak- 
ing only of Labor in the form of product. And 
here I aver, and with all boldness, that the workmen 
of to-day are not as competent, as skillful, as efficient 
or industrious as were their predecessors in a given 
trade or occupation. 

There is a reason for this, and everyone knows 
what it is. They are not accustomed to speak loudly 
of it ; perhaps some ought not to be asked to. I can 
do this, for I do not run the risk employers would, 
not being in a position to have wreaked on me the 
vengeance that might come to them. It is due to 
havoc that union leaders, professional paid agitators 



THE CHURCH AND LABOR AGITATION 141 

have wrought in that which is their frank avowed 
policy of leveling efficiency downward rather than 
upward, of making the norm of performance the 
work of the least and not the most competent. 

But '' this is no part of a clergyman's business ? *' 
Very well ! Then, for the time being, I am not first 
of all a clergyman but a man. I am not a '' laborer " 
but merely one who works. In this guise, I make 
this declaration: Organized Labor has succeeded 
in substituting mediocrity for excellence — at the 
same price. The unfortunate thing is that the toler- 
ance which has permitted this process to pass the 
mark of just compensation seems powerless now to 
restore the proper balance. The chief responsibility 
in this is one that reaches far out among all our peo- 
ple. The first need is for clear thinking ; the second 
need is for right ethical standards in passing judg- 
ments. 

I have borne in on me the impression that nobody 
who is thoroughly conversant with the Labor Union 
point of view is ever quite clearly outspoken in de- 
claring what it is. I have bred in me the deep con- 
viction that typical labor leaders practice too often 
the habit decried in Scripture of the blind leading the 
blind, who ultimately both fall in the ditch. I am 



142 PAPERS AND ESSAYS FOR CHURCHMEN 

li III ■— — I I I — ■— » 

fearful that those who decry most class distinctions 
are those who seek most to foment class hatred, who 
beget envy, malice and all manner of uncharitable- 
ness, who endeavor with most eagerness to gain ex- 
emption for their favorites from the impartiality of 
law, and are the worst exponents of some special 
privilege. I am harried by the criticism that the 
Church neglects the masses and then horrified to 
hear what these delegates of those masses have to 
say about the Church. I am one of many clergy- 
men who would like to help them, but who find my- 
self a member of a group, ministers of religion, 
whom they will not help, nor even allow to help 
them. 

Who can make the portrayal above sought, and 
why is it not made more clearly? Why is the case 
of those who think they have a case not set forth 
more appealingly, and why are those who could 
make criticism so averse to speaking frankly in the 
premises ? Who is there that knows best what the 
workers of the world need, who can tell them boldly 
what their faults are in the way they seek it ? Who 
is there with sympathy as deep as their sense of rea- 
son and justice is wide and well balanced, whose 
judgment is not perverted by sentimentality, and 



THE CHURCH AND LABOR AGITATION 143 

whose knowledge of facts is equaled by their courage 
in speaking the truth, who will tell them that the 
heightening of wages has already gone too far, to 
be made worse by shortening the hours, and that 
the improvement of conditions under which men 
labor has not been kept pace with by an increasing 
efficiency ? Who will boldly point out facts in this 
connection and speak stern reproof for selfishness 
and shirking and for all self-seeking, as well in low 
places as in high? In short, who will preach the 
Gospel, the *' good news '' of law; and order, the 
sacredness of contract, the just rights of property, 
the high privilege of working unmolested and the 
reasonable expectation of us, who are the middle 
class, the purchasers, of getting what we pay for at 
prices less than those that have already become pro- 
hibitive. Between the two millstones, capital and 
labor, the nether as grinding as the upper, we are 
being ground until we all suffer. 



CHAPTER VII 

SOCIALISM — CHRISTIAN AND PAGAN 

Society of American Bank Clerks. 

An Address to Five Hundred Young Men 
at Their Banquet, 

THE matter on the pages following was 
first prepared for speech and not for 
print. It was later recomposed and 
made into a sermon, preached on a 
Thanksgiving Day. Again it was rewritten and 
was printed, the week before one Labor Day. The 
title may be a misnomer; but the argument speaks 
for itself. The chapter is meant as a contribution 
to the sane discussion of a topic that is now engross- 
ing interest in many quarters. The subject is one 
that many feel serious regarding. In consequence, 
it is one on which it is above all else important to 
feel rightly. To this end, it is important to think 
clearly. It is as an aid to clarity therefore that I 
submit this argument. I hope that its conclusions 
may seem sound. 



SOCIALISM — CHRISTIAN AND PAGAN 
" Is it not lawful for me to do what I will with mine 

Sf. Matthew 20: 15. 



own?^' 



You are all familiar With the Scripture parable 
from which this phrase is quoted. You recall the 
story of the wealthy estate owner who hired three 
groups of laborers to work in his vineyard, some at 
the third hour, some at the sixth hour and some at 
the ninth hour; and who paid them all, at the end 
of the day, a penny apiece. 

You are familiar also with the terminology em- 
ployed. You know how the day was divided, at the 
points of four multiple hours, as the night was di- 
vided into four watches, and how therefore the third 
and the sixth and the ninth hours, being reckoned 
from six o'clock in the morning, represented nine 
in the forenoon, twelve o'clock noon and three in 
the afternoon. 

Perhaps you know also that the translation of z 
certain Greek word here into the English word 
" penny " is misleading. The thing the word de- 



146 PAPERS AND ESSAYS FOR CHURCHMEN 

notes was the denarius, which had a value of about 
nine and a half pence. It should more properly be 
rendered shilling. It was a very good wage, in 
that century and country, for a day's manual labor. 

With these points in mind then, you will notice 
that the cause of the complaint was, not that the 
wages were small — the fact is, they were amply 
large ^ — but that they were unequal. Rather, al- 
though equal, they were for unequal amounts of 
labor. You will notice also that our prejudice 
against the landlord is due not to the fact that he 
was rich but to his arbitrariness. Are they not both 
mine, he says ; the vineyard and the shillings ? And 
are not all these in my employ; the laborers of all 
three groups? What have you to do with it? 
What law shall compel me? May I not do as I 
please in this matter? Is it not lawful for me to 
do what I will with mine own ? 

In this land, in this age, there are two things 
claiming its inhabitants' attention beyond every 
other : that is, work and wealth. As individuals, our 
chief trait is our industry; as citizens, our pride 
swells at thought of our nation's wealth. But alas ! 
what inequality ! The majority of people are work- 
ing people, in the land of luxury and leisure. They 



SOCIALISM— CHRISTIAN AND PAGAN 147 

are comparatively poor people, in a country of great 
wealth. There are a few thousand persons who 
have millions upon millions ; there are millions upon 
millions who have only a few thousand dollars each. 
What more natural then than to expect some dis- 
content ? 

We might expect this, and we have it. To be 
sure, it is not here formed and organized as else- 
where; but it is forming more rapidly than is de- 
sirable. We have a growing spirit of unrest, a 
vague, formless and featureless spectre of dissatis- 
faction, complaint, controversy, quibbling and ques- 
tioning. There is something awesome toward which 
we seem moving in the distance and which seems 
to take shape through the darkness and the mist as 
we move on toward it 

And there are innumerable plans for solving the 
difficulty. We hear of profit-sharing enterprises 
and co-operative schemes, of communist communi- 
ties and economic dreams, the whole aim and object 
of which are to make men equal in achievement as 
they are in opportunity. The clamor of this class 
of reformers is insistent. Their answer to our 
question is simple. It is this: Since no man 
should own more than another, he has, of course, no 



148 PAPERS AND ESSAYS FOR CHURCHMEN 

right to do what he will with his own, simply be- 
cause nothing is his own. 

Now, granted that these schemes are all chimeri- 
cal, they are at least signs of the times. Something 
is wrong. Granted that most employers are honest 
and just and that the great mass of employees are 
earnest and industrious; granted that there is a 
difference in character ah initio; that some men are 
born ambitious and capable. and that others are bom 
lazy and incompetent; granted that most of this agi- 
tation comes from malcontents, incompetents and 
professional critics ; granted that the main current of 
our economic, business and commercial life is healthy 
and free and that it is only its rapid flow that has 
deposited at the bottom a sort of social sediment; 
it is just as true that this flow has also thrown upon 
the surface a kind of life which may as aptly be de- 
scribed as social froth. 

It is difficult to say which is the worse, the more 
unnatural, the more repulsive sight; the submerged 
poor or the light-minded rich. For there are those 
of this latter class. Their name is legion and their 
fame is odious. You know the type. But do you 
know their dullness ? Do you know their stolid un- 
responsiveness to all moral appeal? Did you ever 



SOCIALISM— CHRISTIAN AND PAGAN 149 

take them to task for extravagance, excess, dissipa- 
tion, divorce, laziness, lechery, gossip or gambling? 
Then you know their answer. You have seen their 
surprise. They say: Why? What of it? 
Whose business ? Who shall let or hinder ? Shall 
I not do what I will with mine own ? 

Now, I beg not to be misunderstood. Some of 
the best people I have ever known have been the 
richest and some of the worst the poorest — and 
vice versa. There is no virtue in poverty ; there is 
no crime in wealth. I hold no brief for either claim 
nor lay down any such thesis as that. The fact is, 
I have anticipated. I have overshot the mark. I 
set out, not to speak of these classes but to seek a 
right point of view, a Christian, a scriptural stand- 
point, if you will, as a starting-point from which to 
make a right approach toward a vexed problem and 
get a right answer to a much mooted question. 

To find what is the right view of this matter we 
must first get out of our minds at least two wrong 
ones. These two stand wholly apart from the Gos- 
pel. They subsist without religion. Let me call 
them Socialism and Paternalism. 

Of the first, there is only one generic form, al- 
though this genus has its species. Ever and recur- 



ISO PAPERS AND ESSAYS FOR CHURCHMEN 

rently, would-be reformers come before the public 
with schemes whereby, they claim, the uneven dis- 
tribution of wealth may be avoided and all made 
alike rich in worldly goods. On examination, it is 
found, however, that these schemes, if carried out, 
would result, instead, in making all alike poor. 

Besides they will not carry out. Have the spon- 
sors of these projects learned nothing from history? 
Are they ignorant of the experiments of this kind 
that have been made? Are they ignorant of statis- 
tics also ? Do they not know that, at best, this could 
diminish the needs of the poor but in very small 
measure and only for a very brief time? At the 
most it would give to each person only a few hundred 
dollars. And then what? Either all things would 
return promptly to their former condition or the 
result would be stagnation. Such equality, even if 
it endured, would be synonymous with life on a dead 
level. 

This solution will not solve. It is upward and 
not downward that conditions must be levelled. 
But what of the other plan? I have said it is pater- 
nalism ; that is, the scheme by which the government 
would own everything. By the first method, every- 
body would own something ; by this second, nobody 



SOCIALISM— CHRISTIAN AND PAGAN 151 

would own anything. Each ideal seems ideal if 
attained ; but meanwhile there would seem no middle 
ground between them. Nor is this second one de- 
sirable any more than the first is feasible. Just as 
the first is practically unprofitable, so the second is 
theoretically impracticable. There would result 
paralysis of effort. The man whose wages were 
the same whether he succeeded or failed would not, 
he could not, work as though success or failure de- 
pended on his own devices and on application to his 
task. 

In either of these two cases, under socialism or 
paternalism, it is to be feared we would revert to the 
essential condition of savagery; in the one case 
rapidly, in the other tardily, in both certainly. 
These two plans, therefore, I dismiss from our con- 
sideration. I clear the ground and come then to the 
one thing that is left. We set out to consider the 
subject of poverty. We would find the right atti- 
tude toward this matter of wealth. But here like- 
wise, before making positive statesments, I want to 
make two negative ones. 

There are those who compromise in this connec- 
tion and wjio speak of Christian Socialism. This 
were as anomolous, it seems to me, as the phrase 



152 PAPERS AND ESSAYS FOR CHURCHMEN 

Christian Astronomy, Christian Psychology, Chris- 
tian Chemistry or Christian Science of any kind. 
There simply can be no such thing. That has not 
hindered many persons, however, from holding that 
the Gospel was, in the main, a social message to the 
poor. Jesus, they say, was a social reformer. He 
set up a program which embraced the equality of all 
men, relief from economic distress and deliverance 
from misery and oppression. For years, books and 
pamphlets have been written dealing with the Gospel 
simply as a social message to the poor. These are 
well-meant attempts but wholly foolish and inade- 
quate. Worst of all, they minimize, in that they 
misconceive, the Master's mission. That mission 
was not social, but spiritual; it was not economic, 
but religious. 

This is their mistake in general ; but in particular 
they are in error on two points. In the first place, 
they counsel asceticism. And they do this on what 
they believe is the ground of the Master's teaching. 
They contend that Jesus desired to bring about a 
general condition of poverty in order that he might 
make this the basis for a Kingdom of Heaven. 
This is utterly erroneous. There was in his precepts 
as in his practice no note of asceticism. It is true 



SOCIALISM— CHRISTIAN AND PAGAN 153 

that the itinerant preacher-carpenter at times had 
not where to lay his head, that he had nothing to 
leave to his mother and that his grave was borrowed 
from a friend. But it is also true that he had a 
friend in Zaccheus, who was rich; that he loved a 
certain young man, who had great possessions ; that 
he chose some publicans, prosperous men, as his dis- 
ciples ; that he dined, along with them, in rich men's 
houses; that his first public appearance was at a 
sumptuous marriage feast and that he made his grave 
with the rich in his death. Those Christians who, 
through long subsequent ages of the Church's his- 
tory, have courted contumely, have countenanced 
mendacity, have recommended unreal pauperization 
and sentimentally coquetted with misery and dis- 
tress cannot, with any show of reason, appeal to 
Him. 

In the second place, He prescribed no details. It 
is at this point that these make their greatest mis- 
take. In this case, as in the former, there are those 
who seek, and who claim to find, in the New Testa- 
ment, full and minute details of an ideal social order. 
But He gave no such. On the contrary. He de- 
liberately declined to frame such legislation, even 
for the social problems that were brought before him. 



154 PAPERS AND ESSAYS FOR CHURCHMEN 

The story of the coin in the fish's mouth is an in- 
stance. So is the injunction: Render unto Caesar 
the things that are Caesar's. He did give something 
better; but he did not give details. What he did 
was to lay down principles which would decide all 
questions; but the questions themselves he declined 
to decide. 

As to what these principles are: it is plain that 
his supreme purpose was to make men, who in their 
turn should make the new Kingdom of God. This 
Kingdom was not one to be founded on outward law 
or jurisprudence, but oh inward disposition and de- 
sire. Taking his stand thus, He surveyed industrial 
life, as he did life in every other phase, from above. 
Doing this, he could see a force operating for men's 
hurt far worse than pain or misery or poverty ; that 
is, sin. He could see a power more potent in eman- 
cipating men than wealth or affluence or money ; that 
is, forgiveness. 

Now, to apply this principle rightly to our prob- 
lem, would there not be something like this com- 
posite answer? Shall I not do what I will with mine 
own? Yes, provided it is your own. Whether it 
is your own depends on how you got it. Whether 
you shall do what you please with it depends on 



SOCIALISM— CHRISTIAN AND PAGAN 155 

whether the thing that you please is the right thing. 
Whether it is the right thing depends on whether it 
is the best thing that can be done with it ; that is, best 
for the thing itself, best for you who have it, and 
best for your fellows who have it not. 

Wealth, I say, is or is not one's own depending 
upon how one got it. I have no thought of raising 
the question: Can a man make a million dollars 
honestly? I make no doubt that he can, maybe 
many of them. But whether one have a million or 
a merest modicum is not the point. The point is 
that, whatever he has, if he did not get it honestly 
he does not have it in any legitimate sense. He 
may not do what he will with it, even though he 
should will to do the best of things, merely because 
it is not his to do with. It is not his to keep, it is 
not even his to give away, save to give back, save 
to restore to those from whom it has been filched. 
May I do what I will with mine own? Yes, if first 
of all I am quite certain that it is my own. 

But, this point once settled, the next question 
rises: What is the right thing? What is best to 
do with it? What is best, for one thing, for the 
mere wealth, property, substance, itself ? Is it nec- 
essary always that it should be scattered, dissipated, 



156 PAPERS AND ESSAYS FOR CHURCHMEN 

given away? I think not. It is plain that, in this 
age, for example, the concentration of wealth in the 
hands of dozens is accompanied by an extraordinary 
distribution of comfort among as many millions. 
One of the most obvious facts of modern civilization 
is the enormous advance in the general prosperity 
and in the purchasing power of every social class. 
One has no quarrel with great men who are rich, 
merely as such : they have made living more comfort- 
able. They do wealth no harm, by having it; they 
cannot take it away. If they add to the total wealth 
of the world, they are benefactors. And they must 
leave the benefits, the benefactions, behind. A 
favorite question regarding such a man upon his 
death is: What did he leave? And the simplest 
answer is the truest one : AH that he had. 

In the second place, what is best for oneself? Is 
the thing that I propose to do with mine own the 
best thing for myself? Is it safe for me to be 
rich ? That all depends. It depends on me. Men 
with wealth must realize that they are in the pres- 
ence of a constant and subtle temptation. There 
are such things as the cares of this world and the 
deceit fulness of riches. Our Lord regarded the pos- 
session of worldly goods as a grave danger to the 



SOCIALISM— CHRISTIAN AND PAGAN 157 

soul, as something likely to harden the heart, to en- 
tangle men in earthly cares and to seduce them into 
vulgar lives of idleness and pleasure-worship. 
There is. He would seem to say, no harm but there 
is danger in the possession o£ wealth. The Gospel 
has grave fears about men who have great riches; 
but they are like the fears of an insurance company 
for men who work in powder factories. They are 
not good risks. The rich man is in spiritual danger 
because it is so easy and natural for him to be 
wholly occupied with matters material and with 
things temporal. 

Listen! Here is counsel of perfection. H thou 
wouldst be perfect, go and sell all that thou hast and 
give to the poor — and come, follow me. This 
might not be necessary, but it would be safe. Be- 
cause, listen! A man's life consisteth not in the 
abundance of the things that he possesseth — as 
every one knows. Notice! It is possible for a 
camel, by stripping his load and his trappings to the 
utmost cord, by bending his knees, by bowing his 
head, by belittling himself to his smallest compass, 
to pass through the gate of the city called the 
'* needle's eye." So it is possible for a rich man to 
enter into the kingdom of heaven — but hardly, 



158 PAPERS AND ESSAYS FOR CHURCHMEN 

with difficulty. Therefore, the part of wisdom is 
this : If thy hand or thine eye or thy wealth offend 
thee or burden thee down, cut it off or pluck it out 
or give it away; lest having all these temporarily 
they should hamper, hinder, ruin thee eternally. 

Last of all, and in some ways chief est of all these 
tests of privileges is this question: Is the thing 
that I will to do the best thing for my fellow men? 
This question every Christian man must ask of every 
action. For this is a Gospel inquiry. No other re- 
ligion, not even Buddhism, ever went to work with 
such an energetic message as this: Love thy 
brother as thyself. Humanity of this sort is a thing 
you will look for in vain in Plato or Aristotle. The 
idea of mankind as one family, as the children of one 
God, is an idea of Christian origin alone. Christian 
men of wealth, then, will regard themselves not as 
mere owners but administrators. Here is the su- 
preme test of the institution of private property; 
namely, its contribution to the public good. How 
much, asks the modern spirit, is a certain rich man 
worth? How much, indeed? That is just the 
point. Is he worth what he costs ? 

It is unfortunate that, in our translation, several 
Hebrew and Greek words must all be rendered into 



SOCIALISM— CHRISTIAN AND PAGAN 159 

the same English ones. This must necessarily give 
w,rong, or at best only limited and biased, impres- 
sions. For example, Blessed are ye poor and Woe 
unto you that are rich, sound very partial and de- 
finitive until we study the original. When we do, 
we find that in the New Testament the word '' poor '' 
occurs eighteen times; but in seventeen of these 
cases the word is " ptochos," that is, weak or trem- 
bling; in only one case it is "penicros,'' that is, a 
person in penury. The word '^ rich '* occurs sixteen 
times ; but in only one case is the word ^' plusios '' ; 
that is, plutocratic. This is in the parable of Dives 
and Lazarus. Here the rich man was obnoxiously, 
flagrantly, offensively rich. 

Going to the Gospel therefore with an open mind, 
one finds the position that corresponds with the facts. 
He learns that, in this matter as in every other, he is 
dealing with one aspect, a minor one, of a more in- 
clusive, of an all inclusive, subject. He discovers 
that Jesus Christ was in no sense a social demagogue ; 
that he was a spiritual seer. He learns, in fine, that 
his own task is to help to transform society, in so far 
as it rests on the basis of conflicting interests, into a 
society which shall rest ultimately on the conscious- 
ness of a right and just unity. 



i6o PAPERS AND ESSAYS FOR CHURCHMEN 

To this end, he may think of wealth in either of 
two ways; as a peril possibly to be escaped, given 
away, or as a trust to be administered. For some, 
duty prompts the abandonment of possessions; for 
others, duty points the rightful use of them. Shall 
I not do what I will with mine own? Yes, if it is 
my own, and if the thing that I will to do with it is 
the right thing. It is the right thing if it is best for 
the wealth itself, best for me who have it and best 
for my fellow men who have it not. 



CHAPTER VIII 

REVELATION — FINAL OR PROGRESSIVE 

Sermon Preached on Bible Sunday. 

A Study of Some Theories False and True of 
Biblical Interpretation. 

MY thesis is this: Every sacrifice of 
prayer and penitence, every partial 
representation of perfect character, 
every longing for the realization of 
ideals; every claim established for God's power to 
direct the history of the world in conformity to a 
long predicted and faithfully followed purpose; 
every poem giving scope to faith and wings to as- 
piration ; every prophet laying emphasis upon God's 
certainty to fulfill His purpose and His power to 
bind to His will all the forces of history ; even every 
flash of anger which illuminates God's majesty. His 
justice and His divine hatred of man's moral per- 
versity; every lamentation bemoaning his blindness 
and his sin — these all point to the fulfillment of 
divine desire, and bespeak the work of God in Christ 
reconciling the world unto Himself. 



REVELATION — FINAL OR PROGRESSIVE 

". . . for the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of 
prophecy." 

Revelation 19 : 10. 

There are two different views of the Bible's qual- 
ity, rather two distinct points of views from which 
two types of persons approach it as an object of 
study. The first start with an assumption of in- 
errancy. By this term I mean a definite conception 
of a unique and peculiar sort of perfection which 
marks this book off from all other books in the 
world. Proceeding from this starting point, such 
persons consider it their duty to '^ reconcile '' with 
this assumption every newly discovered item of the 
world's fast growing fund of knowledge — knowl- 
edge of geography and geology, of astronomy and 
chemistry, of biology and sociology, of history and 
archaeology, even of comparative philology and com- 
parative mythology — to bring all things into sub- 
jection to an ideal already set up. 

The other method is to start with the facts as we 
know them, in all these various fields of research, 



J 



REVELATION — FINAL OR PROGRESSIVE 163 

build up on them a theory of the Bible, ascertain 
what is the actual truth regarding it, and with that 
truth be satisfied. And, let me say in passing, satis- 
fied one may well be indeed. He may even be more 
than that : he may be gladly, exultingly grateful for 
what he finds. 

But I anticipate. A word regarding the two 
methods, as a mere coonparison of methods, must 
precede laudation. The first of these methods is 
one which modem scholarship, in every other realm 
of study, has totally and thoroughly disparaged. 
As applied to the Bible in particular, the second is at 
once the more scientific and the more reverent. It 
has not the sanction of age: it is a method but three 
centuries old, while the former is thirty. However, 
this is not its defect, but its excellence, I take it, 
since I write for those who believe that the gifts of 
modem times are good. It is part of a larger proc- 
ess. It is merely the application to the study of the 
Bible, as to that of other subjects, of the inductive in 
contrast to the deductive method, the a posteriori 
instead of the a priori. 

Now, there is a great advantage in being able to 
deal with a question that is settled. The advantage 
is that one can dispense with argument. The point 



i64 PAPERS AND ESSAYS FOR CHURCHMEN 

I cite here is a point that is settled. It is true that, 
now and then, one meets even to-day with obsolete 
ideas as with antiquated methods; but it is seldom, 
and the occasions are becoming more and more rare. 
There are those who use such phrases as " tamper- 
ing with the Bible," when no one has any thought of 
doing anything of the kind. 

There are those who ask for the " authorizing,'' 
by act of Convention, of a certain version, forgetting 
that our present version, the King James of 1611, 
is by actual count the seventh or eighth version, 
every one of which has been for a longer or shorter 
period an approved version in series; who laud the 
*' splendid style "of one special version as though 
excellence of phraseology could ever be a substitute 
for accuracy of interpretation; who revere the 
" matchless English " of that version, forgetting 
that there is no such thing as an English Bible any 
more than there is an English Iliad, a French Ham- 
let, or an American hieroglyph — that the Bible is 
essentially Hebrew and Greek; who confuse adjec- 
tives with definitions and hold theories of dynamic 
inspiration, plenary inspiration, inspiration of illu- 
mination, etc., ignoring, in the interest of theory, the 
fact that the power the Bible holds to inspire men 



REVELATION — FINAL OR PROGRESSIVE 165 

is the best proof that it is itself inspired by God ; who 
are speechless if the infidel taunt them with " The 
Mistakes of Moses/' not pausing to reflect that an 
inspired book need not of necessity be a faultless 
book, and that truth and accuracy are in nowise 
synonymous ; who try to " harmonize geology and 
Genesis/' or to combat the astronomer with " proof 
texts/' seemingly oblivious to the fact that the pur- 
pose of the Bible is not to teach men how the heavens 
go, but how to go to Heaven; who construct theo- 
logical dogmas out of " parallel passages " and 
'' cross-references," in spite of the fact that the 
Bible is a religious book rather than a book about 
religion ; who are shocked if one speak in their hear- 
ing of " The Bible as Literature/' when it is that 
very thing par excellence, not so much a volume as a 
school, not only a tome but a library, containing in 
epitome all kinds of classic structure — law and 
history, drama and tragedy, idyls and epics, proverbs 
and poems, acrostics and sermons, wise saws and 
sacred sagas, legend and tradition, narrative, ro- 
mance and rhapsody. Truly the Bible is a '' Grand 
Old Book." It is not grand, however, merely be- 
cause it is old — nothing is that ; it is old because it 
has been grand enough to persist through all these 



i66 PAPERS AND ESSAYS FOR CHURCHMEN 

i I, 

ages. Misconstrued, misunderstood, wrongly con- 
ceived and mistranslated often, it is still abiding, per- 
manent, pre-eminent, divine, eternal. 

To those — now growing very few indeed — who 
fall within this group described, there is little or 
nothing to say. In their eagerness, they do the 
Bible grave disservice; but they do not know it. 
If they can be told facts, and if facts can mould 
opinions, well and good; but, if not, there is nothing 
to do — nothing at least but to wait. Above all else, 
argument is useless. For this is a realm in which 
argument has very little place. Opinions never 
count for much in the face of facts. There are mat- 
ters, belief in which or disbelief of which are of 
small importance. I know a man who still believes 
that the earth is flat. I know another who does not 
believe in the germ theory of disease. I know one 
who believes it is morally wrong to have his life in- 
sured. And I know another who believes the world 
is coming to an end in such and such a year because 
he thinks he reads it in the book of Daniel. I do not 
argue with them ; no one does. Such persons need 
one thing, and only one: they need information. 
The vast majority of men are gaining this very 
rapidly. In the days of a certain heresy trial, then 



REVELATION — FINAL OR PROGRESSIVE 167 

very popular although now as widely lamented, in a 
neighboring city, twenty odd years ago, a leading 
daily paper remarked editorially : '* We are em- 
braced in a campaign of education that will, in a 
reasonably short time, change the attitude of the 
whole Christian world toward the Bible." That 
attitude in general is now a sane and serious one. 
The result of the change is a new interest in the 
whole subject — an interest as wide as the new form 
of devotion growing out of it is deep, profound and 
reverent. 

But again I pass too rapidly. It is difficult here 
to repress enthusiasm and to hold back eulogy until 
the time for it. I must revert once more. There 
is a slightly different group of persons, different 
from those characterized in the foregoing para- 
graph, who yet will not share this enthusiastic esti- 
mate, who will take exception to, if not indeed um- 
brage at, this conclusion. They are not in sympa- 
thy with those who view the Bible in this second 
manner. They seem to fear something, to appre- 
hend some danger to the sacred writings at the hand 
of modern scholarship and to demand for the Scrip- 
tures exemption from close scrutiny. What shall 
be said of them ? 



i68 PAPERS AND ESSAYS FOR CHURCHMEN 

—— I —— —————— ^ 

They are in no sense ignorant and unlearned men. 
That may not be said. They are learned enough — 
in many matters; they are not, however, students, 
in any worthy sense of the Bible. Moreover, there 
is one other thing that differentiates them from the 
group of merely guileless, naive and unscholarly 
folk; that is, the mood in which they meet discus- 
sion. Too often, alas, that mood is one of bitter- 
ness, of scorn, contempt or ridicule. Perhaps it is 
induced by natural process. Perhaps men here, as 
elsewhere, fear the unfamiliar. Perhaps it is natu- 
ral to suspect, behind every novel thing one hears 
more that is unheard and, because unspoken, of dire 
import. Perhaps they feel no need of new knowl- 
edge of any kind, making that unpardonable re- 
mark, '' The old is good enough for me." Perhaps 
the Bible is to them not really a living book at all. 
Be this as it may, the important thing, the sad thing, 
is that they who oppose the work of critical exam- 
iners of the Word of God too often manifest but 
little of the Spirit of God in their temper and mood. 
Too often that mood is controversial, polemic and 
defiant and their language acrimonious and bitter. 
In other words, they are the critics of the so-called 
Higher Critics. 



REVELATION — FINAL OR PROGRESSIVE 169 

One may say if he will that he does not believe in 
Higher Criticism. It makes very little difference 
whether he does or not. He might also say that he 
does not believe in the law of gravitation. His 
credence or his lack of it will not affect the workings 
of one law any more than the other. Such criticism 
to-day is inevitable. The real question is not 
whether it shall be allowed or not, for all already 
use it in some manner, but only whether it shall fol- 
low an orderly and scientific course or follow the 
vagaries of individual caprice. Of course, much 
that goes by this name is far-fetched and fanciful; 
but that is not the point. No one contends that all 
critics are right in all their conclusions; all should 
agree, however, that they are justified in their 
method. 

Once again, let me go back to the beginning and, 
having tried to disarm prejudice and thus prepare 
the way for them, lay down in series some plain, 
simple propositions. For there are three ways in 
general of regarding the Bible's claim to inspiration; 
the first two, I believe equally false, the third true 
enough to enable the Book to withstand any attack. 
They may be called the Mechanical theory, the Natu- 
ralistic theory and the theory that the Bible speaks a 



170 PAPERS AND ESSAYS FOR CHURCHMEN 

Growing Revelation. Two statements I would 
make under each of these three headings. 

The Mechanical theory is that according to which 
the sacred writers were mere penmen o£ the Al- 
mighty, mere human amanuenses, inscribers who 
wrote something indited — something dictated, pas- 
sage and phrase and letter — and thus something 
word and fact and precept perfect. But the simple 
truth is that the Bible is not perfect in any such sense. 
There are errors of two general kinds. 

First, there are errors of detail, there are dis- 
crepancies of number, date and fact. There are 
irreconcilable parallel accounts of the same occur- 
rence. There are cases in which the literal is con- 
fused with the symbolic use of numbers. And there 
are, in numerous places, undisputable evidences of 
corporate authorship. The fallacy of the dogma of 
inerrancy is apparent to any student of the originals. 
Moreover, grant anything regarding the originals, 
the record has been sadly mutilated in transcription. 
Nor is the difficulty here in any scarcity of manu- 
scripts, but in 'their abundance. Behind the printed 
text, which goes back only to 1488, lies a great mass 
of these. The English Bishop Kennicott has pub- 
lished collations of 634 manuscripts, while the Italian 



REVELATION — FINAL OR PROGRESSIVE 171 

scholar De Rossi shortly afterward added 825 more, 
without by any means exhausting the number of ex- 
tant copies. From a comparison of these, there are 
scores, nay hundreds of cases, in which, after the 
most laborious critical research, scholars are unable 
to determine the exact words of the original text. 
An inspired book does not necessarily mean a fault- 
less book. This book is faulty, but only as a book; 
it is inspired, but only as to content. 

But secondly, in this connection, there are in the 
Bible grave moral incongruities. There are incon- 
sistencies and imperfections in the ethical sphere. 
Spiritual and moral imperfections as well as intel- 
lectual limitations of the authors must in many cases 
be conceded. Conceptions of God follow one an- 
other which are grotesque and unworthy. He is 
conceived of as angry in the Garden of Eden, jealous 
at the Tower of Babel, showing favoritism to his 
servant Moses and enjoining strange acts in the 
Wilderness. By what they plead as His commands, 
men do most questionable 'things. Elisha at Dot- 
han smites a people with blindness; Joshua exter- 
minates the inhabitants of Canaanitish cities ; Samuel 
hews Agag to pieces before the Lord; a small boy 
is stoned to death for gathering sticks on the Sab- 



172 PAPERS AND ESSAYS FOR CHURCHMEN 

bath. One is shocked at the black treachery of 
Jael, violating the laws of hospitality, assassinating 
Sisera; he is distressed to find untruthfulness en- 
dorsed in Samuel's going to the house of Jesse under 
the pretense of sacrifice; but most of all he is amazed 
at some of the expressions in the so-called " Cursing 
Psalms." The assertion cannot readily be refuted 
that there are laws in the Mosaic Code that would 
disgrace any modern statute book — laws with 
bloody, cruel and shocking penalties ; nor that there 
is on record here a long, dark catalogue of crimes 
and wrongs — polygamy, slavery, divorce, revenge, 
deceit, extortion — practiced and permitted in the 
name of religion. 

At the opposite extreme of all this, stands the 
Naturalistic theory of inspiration. This regards 
the Scriptures as inspired only in the same sense as 
are the works of all men of genius — Homer, Virgil, 
Dante, Shakespeare, etc. Those who hold this 
theory compare the Law, the Prophets, the Megilloth, 
the Psalter and the Proverbs with the Book of the 
Dead, the Rig Veda, the Sayings of Confucius, the 
Way of the Buddha, etc. Or they scrutinize the 
Canon and say: Why is the book of Esther taken 
into the Old Testament and that of Judith left out 



REVELATION — FINAL OR PROGRESSIVE 173 

in the Apocrypha? Of the New Testament they 
ask: Why are the Epistles of James and Jude in- 
cluded and Tatian's Diatessaron and the Gospel of 
Peter excluded? Or, in more definite ways, they 
compare St. Paul and St. John with Seneca and 
Marcus Aurelius, Moses with Plato, Solomon with 
Socrates and Job with Omar Khayyam. They ask : 
Wherein consists the excellence of the Twenty-third 
Psalm, the Psalm of Death, over Longfellow's Psalm 
of Life? Or what merit has the Book of Revela- 
tion over Dante's Divine Comedy? The answer 
to all this again is twofold. Not to quibble over 
details, but to take the Bible as a whole, its superior- 
ity over all the rest of the world's literature appears, 
first, in its superiority of substance — in its subject- 
matter ; and, secondly, in its purpose or purport. 

First, consider the subject-matter of the Bible. 
Its teachings are addressed to that part of human 
nature which is most susceptible to impression and 
which is most influential over life's actions, espe- 
cially in those not trained to abstract thought. And 
these, after all, constitute the great bulk of mankind. 
Men never become weary of hearing '' Bible 
Stories," and that because their lessons of faith, 
obedience and courage on the part of men and of 



174 PAPERS AND ESSAYS FOR CHURCHMEN 

wisdom, love and power in God are such as sink 
deepest into their hearts. It is the universal applica- 
bility of the Bible's teaching that has made its influ- 
ence so enormous. 

Again, there is in the Bible superiority of aim or 
purpose. These books are bound together by a 
spiritual unity closer than by binders' thread. In 
secular history, religion is incidental; in Biblical his- 
tory, it is central. The dominant idea in the Bible 
is God's effort to make men godlike. There is here 
the story of the gradual imparting by the Creator of 
His Spirit; the infusing of it into jurisprudence, 
into national consciousness, into social activities and 
into family life. There are records here of a spirit- 
ual consciousness in certain souls which is possible in 
varying degrees to the souls of all. This is the 
mighty influence of that whole mass of history, 
prophecy, psalmody, biography, gospel and epistle, 
witnessing in human souls to the authority of the 
unseen, and vindicating the claims of eternity against 
those of time and sense. 

As a third general theory, we are ready now to 
notice this, which rather than a theory is a patent 
fact; namely, that in the Bible there is a growing 
revelation. We have seen that this book is by no 



REVELATION — FINAL OR PROGRESSIVE 175 

means perfect in detail as regards mere numbers, 
facts, etc. It does not pretend to be and does not 
need to be. There is probably only one book of 
that kind in the world; that is, Euclid's geometry. 
In like manner it makes no claim to be an instan- 
taneous and complete gift; of that sort are the 
Koran and the Book of Mormon alone. Let there 
follow then two final propositions. 

First, the right study of the Bible involves a study 
of the origins of parts and of the order of develop- 
ment these parts present in sequence. As one can 
see in many an ancient building, in a cathedral, for 
example, indications of successive periods of archi- 
tecture, so here he cannot help but observe, built one 
upon the other, different forms of literature. The 
revelation does not clothe itself in a unique garment 
of its own; it takes and uses human thought and 
human language as it finds them. The product 
comes to us stamped with the intellectual and moral 
characteristics of the writers of the different ages 
in which it was being formed. It comprises sixty- 
six books, written by more than forty different au- 
thors, who wrought throughout a period of perhaps 
a thousand years. The most sincere and scholarly 
effort is now being made to have this book tell its 



176 PAPERS AND ESSAYS FOR CHURCHMEN 

own story. When that story is thus told, no small 
proportion of its staitements are seen to be relative 
and transient, and large sections to belong to an 
abrogated dispensation. But to view it otherwise 
is to do violence to its structure and to spoil its real- 
ism and effectiveness. When we do view it thus, 
what we see is inspiration in persons rather than in 
documents ; or, at best, in documents informed with 
personality. To repeat. Revelation is essentially 
progressive. God advanced from revelation by 
symbols to revelation through the prophets; from 
revelation through the prophets to revelation through 
— Ah ! but that's the next and most important point. 
For everything that moves must have a terminus 
ad quern. Development must be toward some cli- 
max. And there is here such a climax. All that is 
in the Old Testament, every dramatic and didactic 
element of revelation, is ancillary and preparatory 
to one thing alone; that is, the revelation of personal 
truth and grace in the Christ of the historic Gospels. 
The great gulf stream of prophecy is the Messianic 
current. The ideal that grew most persistently was 
that of a King of Righteousness, His work and His 
kingdom. In His coming He was perfectly all that 
every one before was partially. And, more than 



REVELATION — FINAL OR PROGRESSIVE 177 

that, He was all that any coming after Him might 
hope to be. Thus is the story of Jesus of Nazareth 
the central point and focus in which all converging 
lines of scripture meet. The message of the proph- 
ets was prospective of the glory that should follow; 
that of the Apostles was retrospective of the perfect 
glory that had shone. The whole of the Bible thus 
becomes the history of one process, the breaking of 
one light, the true light that lighteth every man that 
Cometh into the world. 

That light now shineth and little by little it is 
scattering the world's darkness. Anything in the 
Bible that does not agree with the life, the teaching 
and, above all, the character of Jesus Christ, may 
safely be regarded as human, fallible and imperfect. 
Nothing is more misdirected than are the attempts 
of certain commentators to find remote and recon- 
dite intended allusions to Him where there are none. 
This is not merely negatively harmless, idle and use- 
less; it is positively sacrilegious; it is to make the 
Holy Spirit speak in riddles and conundrums. Put- 
ting aside all such childishness, we may say that the 
Bible is full of Christ; not every word of every line, 
not even every isolated statement of every narrative, 
but the content and purport of the whole series of 



178 PAPERS AND ESSAYS FOR CHURCHMEN 

writings. From Genesis to Revelation, more liter- 
ally than might be supposed, is this the case; from 
the forecast '' Thou shalt bruise his heel, but he 
shall bruise thy head,'' to the exultation of the text, 
" The testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy/' 



CHAPTER IX 

WHAT'S THE MATTER 

With the Episcopal Church? 

First Read Before the Clerical Brotherhood^ 
at the Church House, in Philadelphia. 

1 PREPARED this paper, not because I wanted 
to, but because I had been asked to. I at- 
tempted, not so much to answer this question 
— nor yet even to ask it — as to ask instead 
why it is so frequently asked. On all hands, there 
seems to be a feeling that something is the matter. 
A myriad voices are proffering solutions. In such 
multitude of counsellors, there is not wisdom but 
confusion. I recall a book of Chesterton's entitled: 
'' What's the Matter with the World ? " He apolo- 
gized when it appeared, because there was a printer's 
error. He said the title was too long. All he had 
asked was: "What's the Matter?" There ap- 
pears to many to be something up-side-down about 
the world in general. It is only as subdivision there- 
fore of that major question that so many ask this 
one about the Church. 



THE EPISCOPAL CHURCH 

" He is a mean man who will not boast of his own/' 

Ancient Proverb. 

Those who criticise the Church in general are 
legion. But who are they? One, a man of my ac- 
quaintance, said to me the other day, partly in jest, 
but more than half in earnest : " You will soon be 
out of a job. The Church is going out of business/' 
Another asked me, in all seriousness : " What is 
going to become of the enormous holdings, of real 
estate, endowments, property, etc., when the churches 
are closed up entirely ? '' Both had the settled con- 
viction that the Y. M. C. A. is taking its place. 
These are but two illustrations of a score with whom 
each of you have held converse recently. But who 
are they? The first is an insurance man. By his 
own confession, he has not been inside a church in 
eleven years. The second is a journalist, who 
knows no more of my profession than he thinks I 
know of his. Both their expressions are expres- 
sions of opinion. I return the compliment. 

But, to be specific, what about the Church Episco- 



THE EPISCOPAL CHURCH i8i 

pal ? What is the matter with it ? Well, speaking 
for myself, I do not think that there is much the 
matter. There is certainly nothing wrong that can 
not be righted. There is nothing from which it is 
suffering that could not readily be cured. Still, 
physicians have to diagnose before they can pre- 
scribe. If we can analyze the symptoms, maybe we 
can locate the disease. I think our Church is actu- 
ally suffering from an attack of modesty. 

I like the story of the wounded Tommie, whom 
reticence possessed so utterly that, even on the 
operating table, he would not release — because he 
did not want it seen — a metal object from his closed 
hand. Only upon losing consciousness did he con- 
fide it to the keeping of his nurse. When she got it 
out into the light, it proved to be the Victoria Cross. 

Personally I am proud of the Episcopal Church. 
I believe it is the finest in the (world. If I did not, 
I would seek some other. It is finer than it was 
four years ago. It has come to refinement in the 
fires of war. And it has made a contribution to the 
service of the men at war out of all proportion to its 
size and far beyond the expectation of its members 
at the outset. I believe this. So do you. But 
even that need not blind us to certain of its faults. 



i82 PAPERS AND ESSAYS FOR CHURCHMEN 

Let me speak first of those four words of class- 
room memory; those four familiar *' Notes." I re- 
member that the Church is said to be One, Holy, 
Catholic and Apostolic. It is described in the 
Creeds by those four adjectives. Two refer to the 
purpose and work of the Church, holy and catholic ; 
two refer to the nature and history of the Church, 
one and apostolic. (This grouping is that of Dean 
Hodges.) By these definitives, I understand that, 

First, the Church is " one " in the unity of its 
spirit. The ''blessed company of all faithful peo- 
ple " includes all denominational differences ; it does 
not exclude any. The fault that some are guilty of 
in this connection is in making the word *' One " 
synonymous with the expression, '' One and Only." 
It is not the only Church. 

Secondly, by saying that the Church is '' holy," I 
understand that the purpose for which it exists is to 
make men good. The danger here is that men who 
are already on the way to being good will adopt an 
attitude of arrogance toward their fellows. This 
is the difference between piety and piosity. The 
fault that some are guilty of, in this connection, is in 
making the word " Holy " synonymous with the ex- 
pression '' Holier than thou/' 



THE EPISCOPAL CHURCH 183 

Thirdly, by saying that the Church is " catholic/' 
I understand that it is meant to include all kinds of 
people. It must do this to be universal. It must 
have in it hospitable room for all religious tempera- 
ments. It includes those whose religion is objec- 
tive ; that is '^ high " churchmen. It includes those 
whose religion is subjective; that is, ^' low '' church- 
men. And it includes those, both high and low alike, 
who look, not up or down, but chiefly out — toward 
their neighbors — and who, consequently, are called 
'' broad " churchmen. I say this Church is Catholic, 
in the sense of being universal ; they err who try to 
make it Cawtholic and thus make it sectarian. 

But, fourth, the Church is '' apostolic.'' To 
some, this is an impeachment. To others, it is a 
proof of impeccability. To me, it is neither; it is 
a possibility. The Church was not created perfect 
at the outset, like a temple ; it began rather to grow, 
as from a seed or germ. It is not an organization ; 
it is an organism. It is not a solidarity, but a so- 
ciety. It has a settled administration and a signifi- 
cant history. Adown that history there runs a line. 
It is a thread, however, not a cable. Such is the 
Apostolic Succession. 

Before passing on, I make one comment on all 



1 84 PAPERS AND ESSAYS FOR CHURCHMEN 

I I I I I I 11 ■ I I ) i 

these four " notes." I have said these adjectives are 
in the Creeds. That means they are things I believe. 
Saying I believe them is synonymous with saying I 
have never seen them. For what a man seeth why 
doth he yet hope for ? A Creed is a statement of be- 
lief. Belief is a synonym for faith. Faith is the 
substance of things hoped for. I look forward, 
therefore, and not backward in my search for the 
ideal Church. 

If these four things had been, I would say that I 
know them. Inasmuch as they have not yet become, 
I say that I believe them. This is why the early 
Creeds were sung and not recited. This is why the 
Athanasian Creed was written in poetry. These 
adjectives all have to do with the nebulous, all-unde- 
fined, non-existent, but yet-to-be, state of perfection 
in the future, when the Church shall become, One, 
Holy, Catholic and Apostolic. I believe it shall 
become so. 

As it grows on, then, toward that day of grace, 
what — in the present — is the matter with the Epis- 
copal Church? Nothing, but its youth and imma- 
turity. What are its faults? None, except those 
incident to growth and progress. What are its 
shortcomings? Only those features in which it 



THE EPISCOPAL CHURCH 185 

I ■ 

comes short as yet of an ideal set a far distance 
ahead. 

Anybody who believes it is coming to be the " one 
and only " Church, has not caught the note of the 
Church's being '^one." Anybody who believes its 
members are " holier " than other people, merely be- 
cause they are members of it, errs in vision ; he stum- 
bles in judgment. Anybody who believes that it is 
" catholic," in the sense of ruling out those who are 
protestants, has no knowledge of the meaning of 
that 'word's translation — '' universal.'' Anybody 
who believes that it is '' apostolic," in the sense of 
believing that the apostles knew more about modern 
life and how to solve the problems of the present 
than their present-day successors, pays but little 
homage to his faith in " apostolic succession.'* 

In what I have to say from this point on, I choose 
a slightly different word from faults. I prefer the 
word defects. I call to mind the old French prov- 
erb : *^ Every man has the defects of his virtues." 
And this is as true of every institution as it is of 
every individual. This Church has four qualities, 
all of which are virtues. But out of these very ex- 
cellencies specific defects have arisen. 

First, the Episcopal Church has the Episcopate. 



i86 PAPERS AND ESSAYS FOR CHURCHMEN 

That is a splendid heritage. But it also has a House 
of Bishops. This latter, at present, is a liability 
rather than an asset. Why? Because of its per- 
sonnel. What do I mean ? I mean that these men, 
acting corporately, have recently, for example, put 
us all to embarrassment — as they have done before 
repeatedly. They were simply not big enough to 
see the biggest opportunity that ever has been offered 
— I refer to the proposals made by Dr. Newman 
Smythe and his confreres — to take a Poseidon step 
forward, in the direction of real Church Unity. 

Why this limitation? Because of this personnel. 
Why — for such is the case — do men of mark not 
prove to be shining marks when there is an election 
to a bishopric ? It is not their fault ; it is ours. It 
is due to our timidity. The election of a bishop has 
come, in almost every case in a half century, to be a 
trial of strength between two parties. Neither can 
win; but both will compromise. Neither has the 
courage to give up to the other and elect, first of all 
a strong man, regardless of what kind he is of 
Church-man. The result is, they elect a safe man. 
Now things that are equal to the same thing are equal 
to each other. And together these equal the " Safe- 
ty-first '* House of Bishops. 



THE EPISCOPAL CHURCH 187 

You will not misunderstand me, will you? I 
speak not, as you well know, of our own Diocesan. 
I speak a generality. You know what I mean. 
You also know I speak the truth. You all agree 
with me. I would rather have no Episcopate, as 
one of our qualities, than to suffer this defect. I 
would rather have no bishops than to have a House 
of Bishops made, through our timidity, so weak in 
personnel here that they would do what they did in 
our name last summer. As our most prized in- 
heritance, I repeat, we have the Episcopate. That 
is a virtue. But we also have Episcopoi, who cor- 
porately have such timidity that they are deficient in 
a crisis. This defect is a defect of the first of our 
qualities. 

A second defect is our Institutionalism. This be- 
gan likewise a quarter of a century or more ago. It 
began in good faith. There was an earnest en- 
deavor, through building of parish houses and the 
shaping of institutional churches, to serve society. 
That was a virtue. The difficulty since has come to 
be that clergymen, so set to serve, have become so 
busy serving tables that they have had to leave, for 
lack of time, the preaching of the Word of God. 
At this period, the Episcopal Church is not marked 



i88 PAPERS AND ESSAYS FOR CHURCHMEN 

among all so-called Christian bodies, by the number 
of its able preachers. 

And this is not, notice, wholly those preachers' 
fault. The fault is not even theirs primarily. It 
inheres in the situation. Social Service has its 
value, I suppose, if I know what the phrase is all 
about. But society is made up, first of all, of men 
and women. They are individuals. Individuals 
have souls. Our function — call us priests or pas- 
tors, we are all preachers — is the cure of souls. 
But, as preachers, too many are deterred from prep- 
aration by having to perform too many other tasks 
that are, some alien, all extraneous. Those tasks 
were undertaken as a virtue. They have brought 
upon us a defect. It is a defect of this second of 
our modem qualities. 

0)ur third defect I scarce know how to name. But 
I know what I mean. Let me say it is our Socia- 
bility. We coquette too much with other Christian 
bodies ; at least, with two great divisions of Chris- 
tendom. We mean well. To mean well is a virtue. 
But we accomplish nothing. And that is waste of 
time. Such waste of time is criminal. This effort 
leads us nowhere for this simple reason: We are 
trying to work out a basis upon which all Chris- 



THE EPISCOPAL CHURCH 189 

tians can agree which is an utterly fictitious basis. 
We are intent upon uniformity of doctrine. But 
that can never be made a ground of Church Union. 
Men can agree to act alike ; they can never agree to 
think alike. 

As an illustration, I remind you of this. Recently 
the Episcopal Church created a Commission on 
Faith and Order and sent it abroad among the 
Churches to ask for conferences, in the hope that 
some creed might be formulated upon which all could 
agree. Is this what is talked of, hoped for and 
prayed over, in the nature of Church Union? Why 
do people still dream of trying to force religion back 
into channels where it has been choked ? Ever since 
liberty of conscience was exalted above uniformity, 
the right of private judgment has been above sub- 
mission to any doctrinal decree. Any longing for 
union, therefore, need not be a desire for some new 
doctrinal uniformity. So to reorganize Protestant- 
ism would be, in effect, to create a new Catholicism. 
This is from henceforth an impossibility. We are 
farther away from it today than ever before. 

Worst of all, we are intent on this ourselves be- 
cause of our minority. We are moved by the un- 
worthy motive of wanting to count in great num- 



190 PAPERS AND ESSAYS FOR CHURCHMEN 

bers. I recall Dr. Currie's saying once: *' This 
Church of ours is oppressed, every once in a while, 
with a sense of loneliness/' We go out seeking 
company somewhere and, when all else fails us, we 
remember that we are debtors to the Greeks. But 
you cannot be sociable with a Greek. You cannot 
talk their language. And you cannot think their 
terms. Imagine yourself just now as members of 
the Church of Russia! You cannot be sociable 
with the Roman Church, because they do not want 
your sociability. How can two walk together ex- 
cept they be agreed ? The result is the appointment 
of commissions, the framing of memorials, the build- 
ing of air castles, instead of just going on calmly 
at work. This desire is laudable. To want to 
make friends is an excellent quality. It is indeed a 
virtue. But it is a virtue out of which there has 
arisen this, our third defect. 

Fourth and lastly, there is our defective form of 
national Church organization in a country that is 
a republic, living under a form of government that 
is democratic and yet persisting in attempts at legis- 
lation by a method that is so archaic it ought long 
ago to have been changed. The trouble is, our 
Church has not a representative form of Church gov- 



THE EPISCOPAL CHURCH 191 

ernment. There are always questions coming up, 
in General Convention, which that Convention is not 
competent to pass upon, because it is not rightly 
constituted. We are always talking about the 
" Mind of the Church " ; but the Church has no way 
of expressing its mind. A pertinent query is this : 
Who are '' we " ? How many Episcopalians are 
there? What do we want? Knowing what we 
wish, what is the way to get that wish expressed? 
And my observation is : There is no way at present 
of getting that wish expressed in terms of legisla- 
tion, by the Church's legislators, as the Church's 
legislative body is now constituted. 

Why does this state of things continue thus ? For 
no reason on earth except that ^' It always has been 
so." It was so in the beginning, is now and . . . 
Ever shall be? That is just the point. It was so 
in the beginning. It was then a virtue. The dio- 
ceses then were few and small. Now they are 
numerous and various. Things continue so now, 
not because there never have been proposals to 
change — proposals to do this have been made re- 
peatedly — but because, up to date, the very people 
who would have to vote to make the change have 
been the people who would be, or think that they 



192 PAPERS AND ESSAYS FOR CHURCHMEN 

would be, put to some disadvantage. This is a de- 
fect. For, advantage is a selfish word. If selfish- 
ness could have place in a Church Council, there 
would be for this some show of reason. At the best, 
there is no reason ; there is only some excuse. Shall 
it always be so? I trust not. A change in the 
Church's Constitution will come. It must come, 
soon or late. Would that it might come soon. If 
it does not come soon, there is grave danger that, 
when it does come, it will have come too late. 

But I have claimed your time beyond the limit of 
your patience. I beg pardon for the former, and 
I hasten to relieve the latter. I have not done — 
by an hour or two. I stop, however, within my al- 
lotted time. There are many other faults. But 
really, gentlemen, most of them are only foibles. 
There is nothing much the matter with this Church. 
The trouble is entirely with Churchmen. There is 
not a malady from which our body suffers that 
could not be cured tomorrow, if we took our medi- 
cine. Just what the medication is, the doctors must 
decide. But who is to decide when the doctors dis- 
agree ? Well, I am not a doctor. The proof is that 
I never disagree with anybody. I am only one. 
You may out-vote me. But I know you will not. 



THE EPISCOPAL CHURCH 193 

For you all agree with me. The reason I know 
is that you all have agreed with me individually. 
Toward the treatment of our patient, these may be 
some points in diagnosis first of the disease. I have 
said I am ^' one.'^ So are you each. May I corre- 
spond to you likewise in that I am as " holy/* '^ catho- 
lic " and " apostolic." 



CHAPTER X 

CHANGE OF NAME OF THE CHURCH 

Proposal Made to General Convention. 

Plea to Postpone the Discussion Until We Change 
the Church's Constitution. 

THERE has been discussion of late about a 
matter to which all have heard reference. 
I mean the proposal to " Change the 
Name of the Church/' I have never 
talked much in public about this : indeed I have not 
talked much in private, or to individuals, about it. 
This is for three reasons : first, because I have never 
been able to bring myself seriously to believe that the 
thing would happen; secondly, because it has not 
been my observation that as a congregation you have 
been keenly interested; thirdly, for a reason I will 
shortly come to. That last was my reason for pre- 
paring this discourse. I submitted this study, at the 
time, as a Sermon in Church. One generous parish- 
ioner made possible the publication of it in pamphlet 
form and it was mailed throughout the community. 



CHANGE OF NAME OF THE CHURCH 

" Judgment is turned away backward, and justice stand- 
cth afar off; for truth is fallen in the street, and equity 
cannot enter.'* 

Isaiah 59: 14. 

First of all, let us get clearly in mind what it is 
that is being considered. I cannot do better at this 
point than to quote a statement of the situation in 
the language of a sermon preached recently to his 
own congregation by the Rector of St. Stephen's 
Church, this city. 

" At the General Convention in St. Francisco, a 
commission was appointed to ascertain the mind of 
the dioceses on this subject. The vote against any 
change was so overwhelming that the matter was 
allowed to drop at the General Convention in Bos- 
ton. The good effect of the cessation of the agita- 
tion was seen in the remarkable harmony and good 
will that prevailed in the General Convention in 
Richmond. 

" A small band, however, sprang a proposal upon 
the General Convention in Cincinnati, to drop the 
word * Protestant ' from the title page of the Prayer 



196 PAPERS AND ESSAYS FOR CHURCHMEN 

Book, and to entitle that manual ' The Book of Com- 
mon Prayer of the Holy Catholic Church, according 
to the use of that portion thereof known as The 
Episcopal Church in the United States of America/ 

'* This amendment only failed by one vote of pass- 
ing both orders in the House of Deputies. Of 
course the House of Bishops would have had to 
assent also before the amendment could be adopted ; 
but, as the amendment was carried in the Clerical 
order in the Lower House, it could hardly be ex- 
pected that the more clerical of the two houses, the 
House of Bishops, would have rejected it. 

" It is true that such action would have had to be 
confirmed at a subsequent General Convention. It 
is also worth noting that many people were misled 
by a specious argument that the passage of the 
amendment by that convention was only a way of 
* getting the question before the Church,' and would 
really have been opposed in the end to the measure 
for which they voted in the beginning. 

*' But, making all qualifications and deductions, 
the weight of opinion in favor of change was star- 
tling. A campaign on behalf of this innovation has 
since that time been industriously continued in cer- 
tain of the Church papers, with a growing tendency 



CHANGE OF NAME OF THE CHURCH 197 

to favor some such name as ' The American CathoHc 
Church ' or ' The American Church.' " 

The next General Convention of the Church, 
which meets as you know triennially, will be held in 
New York City next October. It is possible — al- 
though there is no way of knowing any such thing 
for a certainty in advance, — that this question will 
again come up as an issue in that convention. 

The Annual Convention of this Diocese meets a 
week or two hence in this city. Incidentally, it 
meets in this church. Here also it is possible — al- 
though here again everything in the future is con- 
jectural, — that some resolution bearing on this sub- 
ject may come up for debate and that action in some 
one of a half dozen ways may be proposed. 

I do not know for the present either of these 
things. Nobody knows. You will see therefore 
that, at present, technically speaking and to use a 
common form of parlance, " There is no motion be- 
fore the House." I feel strongly that, until there 
is, it is premature to indulge in a discussion, pro or 
con, upon the merit or demerit of a question that is 
not now framed: upon either one of two questions, 
neither of which may ever be framed. 

Besides, before iwe go further, the field in which 



198 PAPERS AND ESSAYS FOR CHURCHMEN 

all this discussion has been carried on is worth a 
moment's notice also. Just who has discussed the 
question? Just whence are the rumors that have 
come to you ? In what forum, from what platform, 
by whose pen or voice have reasons pro and con 
been framed in a debate, the rumors of which have 
come to your ears ? 

First, there is of course the public press. All 
that you have read there you may set to one side. 
The function of a newspaper is to purvey news. 
The more sensational the news, the more it is pur- 
veyed as any other ware for sale. There is nothing 
yet accomplished; therefore, nothing new has hap- 
pened. Until it has happened, there would seem to 
be nothing to say — nothing to say, worth the read- 
ing, in the newspapers as such. 

Secondly, there are the Church papers, the several 
organs of as many wings or branches of the Church. 
These have spoken editorially. Editors have ex- 
pressed, on both sides, their opinions. There have 
also appeared articles, on other pages, from the pens 
of writers who have set forth arguments for and 
against such change. But all these again, I beg you 
to observe, are arguments before the fact. 

Any question, after it is raised, any motion even 



CHANGE OF NAME OF THE CHURCH 199 

after it is made, not to say carried over from one 
session to another session, is amendable. Of the 
recognized ways to amend a motion there are five. 
(I quote from "Roberts' Rules of Order.") "A 
motion to amend may be made, (a) to add or insert 
certain words or paragraphs, (b) to strike out cer- 
tain words or paragraphs, (c) to strike out certain 
words and insert others, (d) to substitute another 
resolution or paragraph on the same subject for the 
one pending, (e) to divide the question into two or 
more questions so as to get a separate vote on any 
particular point or points separately." 

Therefore, even though all this discussion were 
now on a question carried over from a former ses- 
sion, such discussion might conceivably all fall to 
the ground of a sudden. The very arguments on 
a motion's behalf might be the strongest argu- 
ments against it^ if the time ever came to vote upon 
it and the motion itself had the meanwhile been 
amended. 

But, touching this only in passing, now one word 
or two about the arguments themselves, the argu- 
ments that have been made, will perhaps be made 
again (provided always that the question comes up 
for discussion, which is a proviso with a great big 



200 PAPERS AND ESSAYS FOR CHURCHMEN 

if). These are about as many in number on one 
side as on the other, if you come to counting argu- 
ments on points in number. I have no thought of 
entering upon discussion of the question, notice, but 
of outlining the points that are being discussed. 
There is not time even to state all the arguments; 
but there may be set down here, for illustration 
merely, these half dozen, three on either side. 

The advocates of change aver that our Church is 
Catholic and therefore we should call a spade a 
spade. Their opponents declare that it is Protestant 
and are determined still to call a club a club. 

The proponents of such a resolution as the one 
above are eager to effect Church Union in reality as 
well as in theory with what they believe to be the 
Ancient Church of Christendom. The opponents 
are just as eager for Church Unity and believe that 
the departure would be right about face in the march 
now being made toward all the bodies popularly 
called Evangelical. 

The first believe that we would gain a new van- 
tage ground from which to press the Church's 
" mission '' ; and a new method, right in theory, 
strong in motive, for the doing of all missionary 
work. The second fear that we would cut the very 



CHANGE OF NAME OF THE CHURCH 201 

nerve of missions by attempting to enforce a law 
instead of trying to dispense a gospel. 

I have said I would not argue. I confess I have 
no facts. If I had — I have not — prejudices, I 
would not indulge them here. There are weighty 
arguments, and on both sides ; not only the few men- 
tioned but a score of others; arguments of honest 
men who speak with information and who plead 
from deep conviction for change and against change. 
There are strong traditions, long established and 
deep rooted in the past : there are open visions, high, 
far reaching and important for the future. There 
are men of honest heart and men of open mind who 
are both eager-hearted and as open-minded on one 
side as on the other. 

I have said all that I know, all that I have to say ; 
all that anyone knows, and therefore all that any- 
one should say; upon a question which, remember, 
is not yet a question. And I have said this much, 
not to frame a thesis but the rather to set forth a 
question. I have said it for a reason which I want 
now to present. All that has been said is introduc- 
tion, introduction only, to another question, wholly 
different, which is the question, I submijt, of prior 
and greater importance. 



202 PAPERS AND ESSAYS FOR CHURCHMEN 

I am thinking, not of that which is a question of 
opinion, but of this which is a question of the method 
of determining opinion. I would ask : What is the 
Church's method of determining the wish, the will, 
the mind, the judgment, of its corporate communion 
upon any question? Has it, in the present, any 
method of doing this? Until this, which is the 
"previous question,'' is decided, all discussion on 
such questions as the one cited is but time and talent 
wasted. 

For, remember, the question above is only one of 
many questions like itself that might be raised, 
pressed, argued and discussed. But to what pur- 
pose? Pressed to what end? Argued with what 
object? To be settled? Yes. But how? There 
is no way at present, as the Church is organized, no 
method, no machinery of legislation, by which they 
can possibly be settled on that ground which is the 
ground that they are being argued on. This, I say, 
is one of scores of changes that it might be wise or 
unwise to make; but when it has been decided 
whether change were wise or unwise, how could they 
who make decision be the ones to make or to pre- 
vent the change ? 

For, consider the nature of the question and the 



CHANGE OF NAME OF THE CHURCH 203 

ground of the discussion. The question is one of 
opinion ; the discussion is upon the ground of pref- 
erence. It is not a question of doctrine, but of prac- 
tice. Not belief is involved, but only behavior. 
The whole burden of inquiry is not so much, what 
we ought to do, as what we want to do. The query 
then becomes this and this only: Who are we? 
How many are we ? What do we want ? Knowing 
what we wish, what is the way to get that wish ex- 
pressed ? And my observation is : There is no way 
at present of getting that wish expressed in terms 
of legislation, by the Church's legislators, as the 
Church's legislative body is comprised and consti- 
tuted. 

We face this anomaly, therefore; of a question 
being considered upon merit and being decided by a 
method in which the same merit has no place. If 
it should appear that the Church has no way of 
acting as a body in a way that guarantees its acting 
in accordance with its members' wishes, then all 
questions of mere wish or will or preference, per- 
sonal preference on the part of the persons who 
compose the Church, would seem to be insolvable at 
present. If such is the case, then, is it not the part 
of wisdom to postpone discussion on all questions of 



204 PAPERS AND ESSAYS FOR CHURCHMEN 

————— I I III " ■ — — — ^ 

this character until that way is found? In short, 
instead of talking about Change of the Church's 
Name, we ought first to make a change in the 
Church's Constitution. 

In the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United 
States there are at present about a million communi- 
cants. (To be accurate, there are 968,379 ^'com- 
municants " and 5,428 clergy.) If this million peo- 
ple wanted to call themselves by any name, they 
ought to have that privilege. I will go one long 
step further, even though you go not with me. I 
will say that, by analogy with every other act of 
legislation in a country where all rule is by majori- 
ties, if a majority of this million want something, 
the minority ought to concur. They ought to 
submit. 

And I feel sure they would submit. But what I 
am asking is : How shall the wish of the majority 
be made effective? Suppose the majority have one 
wish upon this subject, overwhelmingly, what likeli^ 
hood is there of its finding expression in any act of 
legislation on the part of the General Convention of 
our Church, as that convention is now constituted? 
I say, if a bare majority want this thing done, even 
a large minority ought to agree. But the trouble is, 



CHANGE OF NAME OF THE CHURCH 205 

an overwhelming majority may want it not done 
and yet, because of our present system of represen- 
tation, a trivial few might pass a law (!) to do it. 

Do you realize how sadly unrepresentative our 
present system is, this system of (mis) Representa- 
tion in General Convention ? Before saying what it 
is, let us see what it is not. Let us see, by way 
of illustrating what the system ought to be in the 
Church in theory, what it is, in fact, in the State. 
How, for example, in the nation, is our Congress 
constituted ? 

That body is made up of two houses; speaking 
technically, of The Senate and The House. The 
Senate is made up of Senators, agents all of states in 
equal numbers, two in number each, and that be- 
cause they are the agents all of sovereign states. 
The House of Representatives is really representa- 
tive, not only because the delegations are units but 
because the very units are of different size; these 
agents come in groups of varying numbers, various 
because they represent proportionately different pop- 
ulations or proportions of the nation's population. 

The State of New York has two Senators; the 
State of Rhode Island has two. Their numbers 
are equal because they represent equal things. That 



2o6 PAPERS AND ESSAYS FOR CHURCHMEN 

is, they represent equally sovereign states. The 
theory here is that things equal to the same thing 
are equal to each other. The State of New York 
has 43 Representatives and the State of Rhode Isl- 
and has 3 Representatives, different numbers be- 
cause they represent different populations. The en- 
tire Senate is a body of 96 Senators, two times 48 
States. The House of Representatives has 435 
Representatives; 36 from Pennsylvania, 3 from 
North Dakota, 21 from Ohio, and 2 from New 
Hampshire. These delegations differ in size in their 
ratio to each other as their populations; that is, as 
7,665,111 is to 577,056 and as 4,767,121 is to 430,- 
572. The second house is a true House of Repre- 
sentatives. They are a representative body. They 
represent constituencies of such sizes as conform 
with facts. 

Now, what is the parallel of all this in the Church ? 
What is our legislative body and what is its form 
of organization? That body is the General Conven- 
tion. How is it organized? It has, as has Con- 
gress, two houses : a House of Bishops and a House 
of Deputies. Excellent. Of the House of Bishops, 
there are members, one each from each Diocese and 
Missionary District. All are on equal footing, as 



CHANGE OF NAME OF THE CHURCH 207 

mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmimmmmmmmtm'mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm^mammmmmmmmmmmmm^m^mmmmmimmmmm 

they ought to be. Each one is equal to each other. 
By analogy with the above, they ought to be. They 
hold their seats by virtue of their bishoprics. Here, 
again, things equal to the same thing are equal to 
each other. They speak each one with one voice. 
They speak for one unit each ; that is, one sovereign 
diocese. So far so good. 

But the House of Deputies? From this point on 
the parallel becomes a farce. One line of what 
should be a parallel is lacking. The House of Depu- 
ties has an equal number of delegates from each one 
of sixty-seven unequal dioceses. The Diocese of 
New York has 89,944 communicants; it is repre- 
sented by eight delegates. The Diocese of Fond du 
Lac has 5,395 communicants; it is represented by 
eight delegates. The Diocese of Pennsylvania has 
58,198 communicants and is represented by eight 
delegates. The Diocese of Springfield has 3,733 
communicants and is represented by eight delegates. 
Why? For no reason in heaven or earth except 
that '' it has always been so." It was so in the be- 
ginning, is now and ... 

Ever shall be? That is just the point. It was so 
in the beginning. By design? More possibly out 
of necessity. This last is neither here nor there. 



2o8 PAPERS AND ESSAYS FOR CHURCHMEN 

It is so now, not because there have never been pro- 
posals to change — proposals to do this have been 
made repeatedly, — but because, up to date, the very- 
people who would have to vote to make the change 
have been the people who would be, or thought that 
they would be, put not to some injustice but to dis- 
advantage. 

Do you not see what the danger is ? Do you not 
see what it is this year; this year of grace, which 
there is danger may be made a year of sinning? It 
is time the Constitution was amended. If amended 
so as to provide for Proportionate Representation in 
the General Convention, the whole discussion on the 
question of a Change of Name would be placed at 
once upon another plane. It would then be worth 
our while to ask: What does the Church want 
done? When that question had been discussed then 
upon its merits, there would be a way of acting 
meritoriously. Now, inasmuch as there is absolutely 
no way of doing, on the basis of the people's wishes, 
what the most people wish done, what is the profit 
in discussing whether the Church wants or does not 
want this or anything like it done? 

The following tabulated statement will show what 
glaring inequalities exiist in the House of Deputies of 



CHANGE OF NAME OF THE CHURCH 209 

the General Convention, in which house, be it re- 
membered, each group o£ representatives has a voice 
in legislating for the Church at large. The state- 
ment herewith offered takes the two extremes of 
strength and weakness and contrasts them, so as to 
show precisely the nature of the present inequality 
of so-called representation in a score of sixty-seven 
Dioceses sending deputies to the General Conven- 
tion. 

I have borrowed from another the below scheme, 
framework, table for statistics, and have filled in 
figures from this year's Church Almanac. Ten of 
the weakest Dioceses are compared with ten of the 
strongest. The figures are for totals each of Clergy 
and Communicants, since the '' Delegations " to the 
House of Deputies are made up of eight delegates 
each, four clergymen and four laymen. This, re- 
member, is the House of Deputies only, distinct from 
the House of Bishops. The latter corresponds 
to the Senate and would continue to. It is only 
what corresponds, in Congress, to the House of Rep- 
resentatives that it would be proposed to change. 
Here are the figures and in these figures there 
are writ large the reasons and the need for 
change. 



210 PAPERS AND ESSAYS FOR CHURCHMEN 



Diocese. Clergy. CommunicantsL 

New York 416 89,944 

Pennsylvania 288 58,198 

Massachusetts 230 48,547 

Connecticut 217 42,130 

Long Island 161 40,209 

Newark 144 35.^94 

Chicago 133 30^398 

Western New York 132 28,394 

Maryland 121 27,301 

Albany 144 25,767 

Total in largest ten Dioceses.. 1,986 524,892 

Average 198.6 42,598.2 

Diocese. Clergy. Communicants. 

Marquette 18 2,700 

Michigan City 26 2,729 

Quincy 29 2,805 

Duluth 40 2,915 

Sacramento 37 3,009 

Lexington 20 3,270 

Oregon 30 3,617 

Springfield 33 3,733 

Dallas 24 3^30 

Delaware 34 3,837 

Total in smallest ten dioceses. . 291 32,445 

Average 29.1 3.2445 

Note, please, what all this illustrates. To take an 

extreme case, Marquette, Mich., with its 18 Clergy 
and 2,700 communicants, has as much voice in a 



CHANGE OF NAME OF THE CHURCH 211 

so-called '' representative " body in shaping the 
legislation of the Church at large, as has New York 
with more than twenty-three times as many Clergy 
and more than thirty-three times as many communi- 
cants. 

If we take the averages, disregarding fractions, 
we find that on an average each of the first ten Dio- 
ceses has as much voice in a so-called '' representa- 
tive '' body in shaping the legislation of the Church 
at large, as each of the second ten, with seven times 
the number of Clergy, and thirteen times the number 
of communicants. 

This state of things is consistent with neither 
equity nor moral power. It is no answer to say 
that each Diocese is a unit of Church life, and there- 
fore equal to every other unit. A unit of one 
twenty-third or one thirty-third the weight of an- 
other unit can never fairly be counted as equal to it. 

For fear this should sound radical, presumptuous, 
revolutionary, let me say again the proposition is 
not new. The question has come up time after 
time. And let me now, from this point on, give 
place entirely to others who shall speak their mind. 
Let them speak not opinions but facts. Let them 
speak not hastily but with deliberation. And let 



212 PAPERS AND ESSAYS FOR CHURCHMEN 

them speak, not their own mind merely but that of 
their Diocese. Let me quote from some past years' 
Convention Journals of our own Diocese. 

Some years ago a Committee was appointed by the 
Diocese of Pennsylvania to confer with other Dio- 
ceses on " Proportionate Representation in General 
Convention." Their report was submitted by the 
Rev. Dr. J. A. Harris, Rector of St. Paul's Church, 
Chestnut Hill. He says.: 

*' The consideration of the subject brings to light 
a situation which is, to say the least, anomalous in 
any representative body such as the General Conven- 
tion is supposed to be. . Its constituencies are the 
Dioceses and Missionary jurisdictions, appearing at 
its sessions by their Bishops, and the Dioceses ap- 
pearing at its sessions by their Clergy and their 
Laity. The concurrence of all three classes of rep- 
resentatives, voting in two Houses, is necessary to 
effect legislation for the Church. 

*' If the legislative power resided in the Bishops 
alone, then each Diocese, in the person of its Bishop, 
would rightfully be upon an equality with every 
other Diocese. But, as already stated, the legisla- 
tive power does not reside in the Bishops alone. If 
there were but slight variations in the number of 



CHANGE OF NAME OF THE CHURCH 213 

the Clergy and the Laity in each Diocese which is 
part of the constituency of the General Convention, 
then again each Diocese would rightfully be upon 
an equality with every other Diocese; for the vari- 
ation of small fractions could be disregarded. 

" But the Dioceses vary greatly in this respect. If 
the theory of the representative character of the 
General Convention is to continue with any show 
of equity, the status in it of its constituent parts 
must be entirely changed from what it is at present. 
If this Church is ever to be in reality, as according 
to some it is in theory, the Church of America, it 
can only be as its methods in matters of legislation 
are American. The average sense of Americans is 
adverse to rule by a technical and not a real major- 
ity. Such majority must be real and fair to be sub- 
mitted to.'' 

The following year, in the Convention of this 
Diocese the following preambles and resolution were 
presented to the convention: 

" Whereas, the Present method of Representation 
in the House of Deputies of the General Conven- 
tion is by Dioceses, and not by delegations propor- 
tional in number to the number of Parishes, Clergy, 
or Commimicants ; and 



214 PAPERS AND ESSAYS FOR CHURCHMEN 

" Whereas, Through the development of the 
Church in the past century and the multlpHcation of 
Dioceses, the delegates from Dioceses containing a 
small minority of communicants can outvote those 
representing a large majority of the communicants; 
and 

'' Whereas, Such a condition is contrary to the 
principles of equity and the true idea of a represen- 
tative body, making the majority of the Church 
liable to be overwhelmed by the minority in some 
important question of legislation, and, if allowed to 
continue, is a danger to the peace and unity of the 
Church ; 

" Resolved, That the basis of representation in the 
House of Deputies in the General Convention should 
be so far modified that the several Dioceses shall be 
represented in proportion to the number of their 
clergy, their parishes, or their communicants, or in 
some more just and equitable method than the 
present. 

" Your committee present the above preambles and 
resolution for adoption by the Convention ; and also 
offer the following: 

"Resolved, that the Deputies of the Diocese of 
Pennsylvania to the next General Convention be in- 



CHANGE OF NAME OF THE CHURCH 215 

structed to present a memorial to the General Con- 
vention embodying the above preambles and resolu- 
tion, and asking favorable consideration of the 
same." 

As the matter now stands in the Constitution of 
the General Convention, the most vital interests of 
the Church are at the mercy of the small minority. 
The exposure is not only to possible but to visible 
imminent danger. We may be upon the very edge 
of a precipice; the very name and style of our 
Church might be changed, our whole Prayer Book 
metamorphosed, our Liturgy transubstantiated, our 
Articles of Religion abolished or reversed, our whole 
doctrine, ritual and worship transformed; in short, 
our Church remodeled and utterly revolutionized in 
her fundamental character by a majority of Dioceses 
which should represent only about one-fifth of the 
number of her communicant members and less than 
that portion of her intelligence, strength and actual 
working force. 

This undemocratic and truly astounding state of 
things in the Episcopal Church is explained by the 
fact that the voting in the General Convention — 
where all the Church laws are made — is in effect by 
dioceses, and not by communicants of the Church. 



2i6 PAPERS AND ESSAYS FOR CHURCHMEN 

For example, the diocese of California, which has 
just instructed its delegates to the General Conven- 
tion to vote for the change of name, has a clerical 
roll of only 93, and its communicants, clerical and 
lay, number 9,352, whilst the diocese of New York 
has a clerical Kst of 416, and numbers 86,944 com- 
municants. Yet the diocese of California casts as 
many votes in the Council of the Church as the dio- 
cese of New York. 

This is enough to show that a change of name 
may take place in the face of an overwhelming ma- 
jority against it. I think it would be actually found 
that, even in such dioceses as California, the dele- 
gates do not fairly represent the will of the major- 
ity, and that if this question were put directly to 
a popular vote not a single diocese would support 
this movement. I believe, therefore, that a victory 
for this propaganda in the General Convention, as 
now constituted, would be the most undemocratic 
thing that has ever occurred in this country. 

It would indeed be grossly unfair from every 
point of view, so grossly unfair, in fact, as to out- 
rage the feelings of loyalty and decency of a very 
large body of communicants and supporters of this 
Church. And I further believe that many of them 



CHANGE OF NAME OF THE CHURCH 217 

would flatly refuse to accept such action as binding 
and would hold on to the name that was given their 
Church at its baptism, which took place at the very 
beginning of our national life. 

And lest this language should seem stronger than 
is wise; lest the writer appear too radical and this 
appeal too modern, let me quote from one whose 
words are weighty from all points of view precisely 
opposite. 

The first Bishop of Pennsylvania, a man eminently 
cautious and conservative, uses the following lan- 
guage, near the close of his long Episcopate, when 
his judgment had been fully ripened by observation 
and experience of men and of tendencies : 

" There may occur questions having important 
bearings on our doctrine, or on our discipline, or 
on our worship ; measures may be adopted by a ma- 
jority, according to our Constitution, but dissented 
from by an acknowledged majority of our Episcopal 
population. It can hardly be supposed, and is con- 
trary to our observation of human nature, that the 
measures would be submitted to.'' (Bishop White's 
" Memoirs," etc., p. 391, 2d Ed., 1836.) 

To sum up. If, as appears, the Church has no 
way of acting as a body in a way that guarantees its 



2i8 PAPERS AND ESSAYS FOR CHURCHMEN 

acting in accordance with its members' wishes, then 
all questions like the one being discussed so widely 
is insolvable at present by any method that would 
make any solution the right one. Such being the 
case, it is certainly the part of wisdom to postpone 
discussion on all questions of this character — this 
question as all questions of its character — until that 
way is found. In short, instead of talking about 
Change of Name, we ought to act at once upon this 
other point, this vital point, and Change the Church's 
Constitution, 



CHAPTER XI 

PROPORTIONATE REPRESENTATION 

Speech in Diocesan Convention. 

On Behalf of a Resolution to Amend the Constitu- 
tion of the Diocese of Pennsylvania. 

I HAVE been asked by a number of persons to 
print, at least in substance, this address made 
a few years ago in our Diocesan Convention 
on behalf of a Resolution so to amend the 
Constitution of the Diocese as to provide for Pro- 
portionate Representation; that is, instead of the 
system of Equal Representation as the Constitution 
now provides. This request comes partly from 
persons who heard the debate. But it comes also 
from others, many of them from other dioceses, who 
are moved to raise the same subject for discussion 
in their own conventions. I am glad to do this and 
to print some paragraphs in introduction telling 
what the situation is at present. It is still the same, 
unfortunately. The Resolution itself was laid on 
the table — to be accurate, on the lunch table. 



PROPORTIONATE REPRESENTATION 

"Eventually, Why not Now?'' 

Pertinent Enquiry. 

At present the Diocesan Convention is composed 
of clergymen and laymen. Of clergy there are, as 
reported, this year by the Secretary, 234 entitled to 
vote. Of parishes there are, sending delegates this 
year, 135. 

The clergy have seats in the Convention, not by- 
virtue of their "office,'' but by virtue of their 
'' titles.'' They speak and vote only as individuals. 
Each clergyman acts only for himself. 

This speaker, for example, does not have a seat, 
does not speak and does not vote, as Rector of the 
Parish of St. Luke and The Epiphany, but only as 
the Rev. So and So. It is only in the Lay Delega- 
tion that there is " representation " as such. 

This was all provided for at the beginning. In 
the Resolutions accompanying the Act of Associa-. 
tion leading up to the very Constitution itself, 
adopted May 22, 1786, there is this language: 

" Resolved, That a clergyman cannot vote as the 



PROPORTIONATE REPRESENTATION 221 

representative of his particular church, but that a 
lay deputy or deputies be sent to represent each con- 
gregation." 

At present, the delegations are all of equal size. 
Each parish, regardless of its size, has the right to 
send three lay delegates. The deputation from each 
Church is entitled to one vote and no more. All 
these things, as they are here set forth, are provided 
for in the present form of Constitution. 

It is proposed so to alter the Constitution as to 
allow the several parishes to be represented by such 
numbers of laymen as will be in proportion to the 
number of communicants in the parish; in short, so 
as to secure Proportionate Representation instead of 
Equality of Representation. 

The principle proposed is so in accord with our 
habits of political thought and action that, in any 
Church which conforms to the ideal — not to say 
bears the name — of American, it ought to prevail, 
unless there be some valid reason against it or some 
insurmountable obstacle in the way. 

The present equal delegations of representatives 
" represent '' grossly unequal constituencies. This 
might be of small account if discussion in the Con- 
vention and voting upon issues there arising were 



222 PAPERS AND ESSAYS FOR CHURCHMEN 

entirely of an academic sort and of a theoretical na- 
ture. But whenever there arise questions of practi- 
cal policy and procedure, the present system is wrong 
in theory, and it works badly in practice. There is 
no guarantee that the wishes of the majority of the 
58,000 communicants of the diocese will be ex- 
pressed in the vote of the present 405 deputies ; that 
is, 3 each from 135 parishes. 

Issues might arise — haye arisen, in fact, in the 
past — where a vote upon a question of importance 
might be carried by a large majority of delegates as 
such who represent the wishes of only a small minor- 
ity of the communicants of the diocese at large. 
Herein is a grave danger. It is a danger not only 
possible but actual. It is not only probable, but in 
certain circumstances it is almost inevitable. 

How serious the situation is may be illustrated 
thus: I have in mind one parish reporting 1700 
communicants: It is represented by 3 delegates. 
I have in mind another " parish '' with 17 communi- 
cants. It also is represented by 3 delegates. 

As less extreme illustrations I have in mind a half 
dozen parishes reporting between 60 and 70 com- 
municants each; another half dozen reporting be- 
tween 600 and 700 communicants each; and still 



PROPORTIONATE REPRESENTATION 223 

another half dozen which have 1600 or 1700 com- 
municants each. 

At present these are represented all, regardless of 
their size, 'by the same number of delegates. This 
is both unjust, unwise and unamerican — and all be- 
cause unreasonable. It is the old story of the 
Southern Delegates in the Republican National Con- 
vention ; the story of voters in convention who vote 
for small, or relatively small, constituencies. 

I say, it is unreasonable. It is so because in act- 
ing thus we are trying to do something that cannot 
be done. We are trying to strike an average among 
things of unequal size; and such an average cannot 
be found. Even if it could? Some one has said: 
You cannot strike an average between an elephant 
and a mouse; and, if you did, what would become of 
the elephant and what would become of the mouse? 

There is no such thing as an average representa- 
tion from parishes ; for there is no such thing as an 
average parish. If there were, what bearing would 
its size have upon any other, either less or greater, 
in the measure of that special parish's representation? 
There is no possibility of just representation where 
you have equal delegations from unequal parishes. 

But there is a worse fault than any of these. The 



224 PAPERS AND ESSAYS FOR CHURCHMEN 

worst fault of the present system is in the loss, the 
waste, the hindrance that it causes to the doing of 
what could be so much better done. There are great 
resources in this diocese going to waste for want of 
being used. There are lost opportunities, undevel- 
oped forces, potent powers and most efficient agents 
unemployed throughout the diocese because so many 
of the largest parishes are not more largely repre- 
sented in the councils of the Church, there to be made 
conversant with the Church's problems, with its ef- 
forts, plans and policies and, being thus informed, 
sent home and set to work. It is as though you had 
truncated a cone. You are building upon a base 
of only partially the area of the possible base. 

The proposed method has many advantages. 
There is, first, the advantage of intrinsic equity and 
justice. If the character of the Convention is to 
have any show of equity, the status in it of its con- 
stituent parts ought to be changed from what it is at 
present It must be made fairly representative or 
in no true sense can it be said to be representative 
at all. 

There is, secondly, the advantage that would come 
from a change to so large an extent of personnel, in 
the deliberative body. If the Convention were 



PROPORTIONATE REPRESENTATION 225 

broadly comprehensive and fairly representative, it 
would become to an infinitely larger extent than it is 
at present the right place for all deliberation upon 
all the problems of the diocese as a whole. 

This would make uncalled for and unnecessary all 
irregular, occasional, unauthorized, unconstituted 
caucuses and conferences elsewhere. Such cau- 
cuses would cease to be held by a minority party in 
any issue; they would do' no good. They would 
cease to be held by a majority party in any proposed 
course of action; this because they would not be 
needed. 

But, thirdly, it would make the Convention itself 
a real deliberative body. This it ought to be. The 
place for all discussion of diocesan affairs is in the 
Diocesan Convention. It is not at meetings of the 
Church Club; at meetings of the Clerical Brother- 
hood; at Annual or Semi-annual Dinners; at Mis- 
sionary Rallies; it is not even at Meetings of Con- 
vocations. 

I have always felt keenly that all discussion upon 
all such subjects should be in the open, and upon the 
floor of the Convention. At the same time I have 
often felt the hopelessness, the utter uselessness, of 
discussing such subjects in a body which was so un- 



226 PAPERS AND ESSAYS FOR CHURCHMEN 

justly and unfairly organized that when it came to 
voting on such questions the vote was so little ex- 
pressive of the whole mind of the diocese. 

I have the greatest faith in threshing out the prob- 
lems of the diocese in the Diocesan Convention; but 
that ought to be such a convention as would repre- 
sent the diocese in its proportionate parts. The 
Convention as at present constituted can act per- 
fectly in any legislation which involves no cost and 
thwarts no will ; but when any question arises — 
such as one that is at this moment most pressing — 
we would have to act, if we acted in any way worth 
while, in accordance with the wishes of the people. 
But to have those wishes expressed in our action we 
would have to have here in Convention persons rep- 
resenting those 58,000 communicants in -proportion 
to the number of those represented, delegate by 
delegate. 

Most important of all, there would be the advan- 
tage of increased interest and efficiency in the plans 
and projects of the Church, which would result from 
bringing the whole body of the faithful into closer 
touch with them and furnishing the larger parishes, 
through a larger number of delegates, with a better 
intelligence concerning such problems. In the case, 



PROPORTIONATE REPRESENTATION 227 

for instance, of an " apportionment '' ; this would be 
easy to lay (and relatively easy to collect the money) 
if it were laid upon a body that was '' proportion- 
ately " constituted. 

•Lastly, there would be the advantage of a better 
and more generous support of the poor and weak 
parishes by bringing a larger number of representa- 
tives of the rich and strong parishes to a personal 
acquaintance and appreciation of the condition of 
their needy brethren. This would have important 
bearing upon all such problems as one to be brought 
up for consideration just this year, that of doing in 
some more successful way the City's missionary 
Work. 

This whole point is the one touched on above. 
But it is so important that it deserves emphasis both 
ways, inversely and directly. There is loss as things 
are; there would be immeasurable gain if things were 
as they ought to be. It goes without saying that 
there is no desire to cut present delegations down, 
but there is a desire to build up those that at present 
are too small. 

If this second end should have to be gained at that 
first expense, the small parishes themselves would be 
the very ones to profit by this process in the end. 



228 PAPERS AND ESSAYS FOR CHURCHMEN 

They would gain, in the amount of help they would 
eventually receive from the strong, infinitely more 
than they would even seem to lose temporarily by 
exclusion in part of their delegations. 

The method proposed is neither new nor is it un- 
tried elsewhere. I have written to the secretary of 
each of the sixty-eight dioceses in the United States 
in order to secure the latest copies of their constitu- 
tion and canons. The missionary districts were not 
included, since they have no constitutions. Failing 
in a few cases to elicit replies from the secretaries, 
I wrote to the Bishops. This brought such return 
as to make the files complete. A thorough digest 
was then made of articles of every constitution and 
of every canon under which each is operative. This 
digest as well as this file of constitutions and canons 
are all available for reference. 

I have carefully compiled these facts, figures and 
statistics in the form that I have thought best shows 
the situation. These are most surprising and they 
are most gratifying. It is gratifying to learn how 
many dioceses already have some form of Propor- 
tionate Representation; it is surprising to learn in 
how many forms they have it. 

By classification, it appears that in only four- 



PROPORTIONATE REPRESENTATION 229 

teen dioceses at present out of sixty-eight, is there 
absolute equality of representation of just the kind 
that now prevails in Pennsylvania; v^hile in all the 
remaining fifty-four there is at least some other 
form of representation. In other words, our own 
diocese at present is distinctly in the minority. 
This is interesting as raising the question whether 
the burden of argument is upon those who propose 
change or upon those who oppose change. 

In that classification, there are two main groups, 
with certain subdivisions. 

First, there is the group in which there is Equality 
of Representation. Yet even in this uniformity 
there is diversity. That is to say, there are differ- 
ences in the number of delegates adopted as a limit 
in the different dioceses. In some cases each parish 
is entitled to three, in some to four, and some even 
to five. In certain small dioceses, if the number 
allowed all parishes is large; that is, in a diocese 
made up mainly of small parishes, where the number 
a large parish could send to the Convention is as 
great as four or five, the method works out automati- 
cally in a graded scale in any case, since only the 
largest, relatively, send their full quota; others 
dwindle off in natural proportion. 



230 PAPERS AND ESSAYS FOR CHURCHMEN 

These dioceses are Albany, California, Central 
New York, East Carolina, Long Island, Los Ange- 
les, Massachusetts, Milwaukee, Newark, New Jer- 
sey, New York, Pennsylvania, Southern Ohio, and 
Western New York — (14). 

Secondly, there are those in which there is Propor- 
tionate Representation of some kind. Of course, in 
some of these the method is more strictly '' propor- 
tionate " than in others. All together they fall into 
the following three classes : 

(a) There are those that admit to representation 
organized missions and yet make a distinction in the 
number of delegates between those allowed to a mis- 
sion and those to a parish. For example, some 
allow one to a mission and two to a parish ; some two 
to a mission and three to a parish ; some one or two 
to a mission and three or four or even five to a 
parish. 

These are Alabama, Arkansas, Atlanta, Chicago, 
Colorado, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, 
Lexington, Marquette, Michigan, Michigan City, 
Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, North Carolina, 
Ohio, Oregon, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, 
Western Massachusetts, Western Michigan, West 
Virginia, Louisiana and Springfield — (27). 



PROPORTIONATE REPRESENTATION 231 

(&) There are those that carry out the theory of 
Proportionate Representation more consistently and 
have a more definite scale of gradation among 
parishes themselves, working up from one or two, 
to three or five or seven, etc., usually by adding one 
additional deputy per hundred communicants. In 
some of these, organized missions have representa- 
tives ; in some they do not 

Those in this class are Bethlehem, Dallas, Duluth, 
Erie, Fond du Lac, Harrisburg, Indianapolis, Iowa, 
Kansas, Kansas City, Maine, Minnesota, Missouri, 
New Hampshire, Olympia, Pittsburgh, Quincy, 
Rhode Island, Sacramento, Vermont and West 
Texas — (21). 

(c) There are those in which the theory of Pro- 
portionate Representation is plain, but in which the 
basis is a different one from that just cited. The 
basis is not the number of communicants, but the 
number of clergy in a parish, or the number of places 
of worship. 

For example, in the dioceses of Easton, Mary- 
land, Southern Virginia, Virginia and Washington 
there is one lay delegate from each parish and one 
■additional " for each minister regularly and canoni- 
cally elected in that parish." In Connecticut, each 



232 PAPERS AND ESSAYS FOR CHURCHMEN 

parish has a defini: e number of delegates to start 
with, and an additional delegate for " each separate 
congregation worshiping in a separate edifice " — 

(6). 

On which side now is the burden of proof? Is it 
incumbent upon one who champions this resolution 
to persuade this Convention of its need of change? 
Or is the larger task the task of those who would in- 
sist upon allowing a bad system to continue? The 
burden lies, not on those who propose change, but on 
those who oppose it. 

I make certain observations and concessions. It 
is true that some of the largest dioceses are those 
mentioned in the group having Equality of Repre- 
sentation. But the study of cause and efifect must 
be carefully made here. The dioceses are not large 
because they have this form of representation; they 
have this form of representation because they are, 
all of them, old dioceses. They were organized 
long ago. They were organized under the old sys- 
tem, have not yet changed, and have the meanwhile 
grown for other reasons. 

Moreover, when they were organized, at the 
Church's very beginning, the old, original Eastern 
dioceses were coterminus with states. The same 



PROPORTIONATE REPRESENTATION 233 

problems had to be met and the same compromises 
had to be made in one case as in the other — and 
by the same men, prominent in Church and State 
alike. The fact that they are large is only inciden- 
tal ; it is a fact to be associated rather with their age 
than with their form of constitution. 

When this proposition was before this Convention 
20 odd years ago, there were only 44 dioceses in the 
country. Now there are 68. At that time, the re- 
port of the committee to investigate the facts showed 
that 28 had Equality of Representation and 16 some 
form of Proportionate Representation. At present, 
the figures are as above: 15 with Equality of Repre- 
sentation and 53 with some form of Proportionate 
Representation. 

I desire at this point not to lay too much stress 
upon these figures in the abstract. Those that are 
mine I have tabulated as above. They must be taken 
in detail rather than as summaries. The basis of 
division may not be the same that I have used as 
that used by the committee above referred to. Their 
figures I have not gone into. I have quoted their 
report. Mine are as I have analyzed them. When 
90 analyzed, they prove, I think, their own point. 

In the abstract, however, this may be made as a 



234 PAPERS AND ESSAYS FOR CHURCHMEN 

III I ^—■-— I I I 

statement of fact: The principle of Proportionate 
Representation is steadily and surely gaining ground. 
This appears in two facts : First, no diocese having 
adopted this method has gone back to the old 
method; and, secondly, practically every new dio- 
cese organized within this period of twenty years and 
more has organized itself of its own choice upon the 
basis of Proportionate Representation. 

And the subject is just now very much to the fore. 
I have a mass of interesting correspondence from 
Secretaries to whom I wrote, showing that the mat- 
ter is being widely considered and that the principle 
is daily gaining ground. Several dioceses are at 
present in the very process of amending their consti- 
tutions. Notable in this connection is the diocese 
of California. 

The burden of argument, therefore, certainly lies 
on the side of those who oppose change rather than 
of those who propose it. The diocese of Pennsyl- 
vania is at present distinctly in the minority, in just 
its special form of representation. Among other 
things, all 4 sister dioceses in our own state have 
Proportionate Representation. In other words, 
each diocese in Pennsylvania has it except the dio- 
cese of Pennsylvania. 



PROPORTIONATE REPRESENTATION 235 

I i 

Here let me read the proposed amendment itself: 

Resolved, That Article IV, section 2, paragraph 
one, of the Constitution of this Diocese be amended 
as follows: 

Beginning middle of line 5, strike out 

" Each regularly established Protestant Episcopal 
Church in this Diocese, now a member, or which 
shall hereafter be admitted a member of this Con- 
vention, may send to the Convention a Lay Deputy 
or Deputies, not exceeding three in number, to be 
elected by the Vestry of said Church: Provided, 
That no person shall be competent to serve as Deputy 
unless he has been a worshiper in the Church he 
represents, six calendar months next before his elec- 
tion. When two or more Churches are united under 
one Vestry, Deputies may be sent from each Church 
subject to the proviso aforesaid. The deputation 
from each Church shall be entitled to one vote, and 
no more." End of line 17. 

And beginning middle of line 5, insert 

'' Each regularly established Protestant Episcopal 
Church in this Diocese, now a member, or which 
shall hereafter be admitted a member of the Conven- 
tion, may send to the Convention one Lay Deputy. 
And each such Church may send additional Lay 



236 PAPERS AND ESSAYS FOR CHURCHMEN 

Deputies in such proportion to the number of its 
communicants as reported to the Convention next 
preceding, as the Convention may from time to time 
by Canon prescribe: Provided, however, That no 
Church shall at any time send to the Convention 
more than seven Deputies; And provided further, 
That the ratio of representation when fixed by Canon 
shall not be changed except by a two-thirds vote of 
each order. No person shall be competent to serve 
as a Deputy unless he has been a worshiper in the 
Church he represents, six calendar months before his 
election. When two or more Churches are united 
under one Vestry, Deputies may be sent from each 
Church subject to the provisos aforesaid. Such 
deputies shall be elected by the Vestry of the Church 
and shall vote as individuals, except in final action 
upon proposed changes in the Constitution.'' 

It is clear at a glance that four questions are in- 
volved. Change is proposed at that number of 
points. 

The first is that all parishes merely as parishes 
should begin on an equality with one deputy. The 
point of importance here is not that the number to 
begin with should be one, but that all should begin 
on an equality; none is too small to have its first, 



PROPORTIONATE REPRESENTATION 237 

definite, recognized and equally authoritative repre- 
sentation. I would be perfectly willing to begin 
where we are at present, namely, with three, and to 
build up from that ; but I fear that by this plan the 
thing in the end would become top heavy. 

The second is that the basis of increase should be 
some ratio of the communicants by number. Here 
again the one point of importance must be kept in 
mind, clearly distinct from others incidental and 
extraneous that are in danger of being confused 
with it. No question is raised of how or by whom 
delegates are to be elected. That is already pro- 
vided for. All that would remain as it is. The 
delegates would be elected, as now. The point is, 
not who shall vote, but how many shall be voted for, 
and on what basis their number is to be determined. 
The number of communicants in each parish seems 
a better basis upon which to fix the ratio than the 
number of clergy in a parish, the number of congre- 
gations worshiping in separate mission buildings, 
etc. That is all that is involved imder this second 
point. 

The third point is that the determining of this 
ratio should be left to canon, so that details would 
not need to be embedded in the Constitution. This 



238 PAPERS AND ESSAYS FOR CHURCHMEN 

is most important of all. My hope is to confine dis- 
cussion to the mere question of principle and not to 
consider details. Simply embody the principle itself 
in the Constitution, with as little change as may be 
and in as few words as possible, and then from time 
to time find ways, the most effective ways, to make 
this principle operative in the canons which are much 
more easily and safely changed than the Constitu- 
tion. 

The fourth and last point is that the deputies shall 
vote as individuals. Not to do this would leave the 
way so open to call for a vote by orders upon every 
question (which might mean by parish units) that 
the whole effect of the amendment would be nulli- 
fied. I have been influenced here, as elsewhere, in 
the language used by noting what is used in the ma- 
jority of cases elsewhere upon the same point. This 
language on this point is that used in all kinds of 
constitutions, which have many kinds of canons. 
AH lines appear to converge on this point. I am 
satisfied it is of prime importance. 

I anticipate some possible objections. There may 
be aversion to change merely as change. The plea 
may be made that we have never done things thus ; 
or that we have always don^ th^ni §o and so. This 



PROPORTIONATE REPRESENTATION 239 

is a statement of fact, but not an argument — for or 
against anything. 

Secondly, the fear may be expressed that this plan 
would crowd the Convention floor with delegates. 
Upon the contrary, it would be more likely to de- 
crease than to increase the number as a whole. For, 
remember, a strict application of Canon Thirteen, on 
Communicant Lists, would cut them down percep- 
tibly. 

Even taking figures as they are reported roughly 
in this year's Convention Journal, this is how the 
matter would work out. The number of parishes 
that would have one or two delegates only is so large 
compared with the small number of parishes that 
would have a large number of delegates that the one 
thing just about offsets the other. 

Between o- 100 Communicants, 21 Parishes 
Between 100- 200 Communicants, 28 Parishes 
Between 200- 300 Communicants, 20 Parishes 
Between 300- 400 Communicants, 16 Parishes 
Between 400- 500 Communicants, 14 Parishes 
Between 500- 600 Communicants), 11 Parishes 
Between 600- 700 Communicants, 6 Parishes 
Between 700- 800 Communicants, 4 Parishes 
Between 800- 900 Communicants, 3 Parishes 
Between 900-1,000 Communicants, i Parish 

Between 1,000-1,100 Communicants, i Parish 

Between 1,100-2,100 Communicants, 10 Parishes 



240 PAPERS AND ESSAYS FOR CHURCHMEN 



To begin with one delegate from each parish and 
add one for each full hundred disregarding frac- 
tions, and stopping, as the amendment provides, with 
seven delegates, v/ould give this: 



21 Parishes, 


I Delegate 


— 21 


28 Parishes, 


2 Delegates 


- 56 


20 Parishes, 


3 Delegates 


— 60 


16 Parishes, 


4 Delegates 


— 54 


14 Parishes, 


5 Delegates! 


= 70 


II Parishes, 


6 Delegates 


— 66 


25 Parishes, 


7 Delegates 


= 155 



135 Parishes, Delegates 482 

To hegin with one delegate from each parish and 
add one for each full hundred after the first hundred 
would give this : 

49 Parishes, 
20 Parishes, 
16 Parishes, 
14 Parishes, 
II Parishes, 
6 Parishes!, 
19 Parishes, 

135 Parishes, Delegates 417 

No question of party ought possibly to have place 
in this consideration. Looking over the list above 
compiled, it will be seen that dioceses differing ut- 



I Delegate 


= 49 


2 Delegates 


— 40 


3 Delegates 


- 48 


4 Delegates 


56 


5 Delegates 


— 55 


6 Delegates 


36 


7 Delegates 


= 133 



PROPORTIONATE REPRESENTATION 241 

terly in their types of churchmanship stand side by 
side on this question. As a mere detail, it may be 
mentioned that a thoroughly ideal form of Consti- 
tution and Canons, so far as this matter is concerned, 
is that of the diocese of Fond du Lac. 

If anyone should fear the banding together of a 
few large parishes in this diocese to dominate affairs 
in the Convention, well, here are those largest nine- 
teen referred to above; that is, those with communi- 
cant lists over 700. If the mere reading of this 
list does not prove my point, well, read it again. 
Pair them off and read them two by two. 

Here they are arranged alphabetically: Advo- 
cate, 1497; Covenant, 823; Holy Apostles, 1536; 
Holy Trinity, 1633; Incarnation, 712; Resurrection, 
806; St. Clement's, 705; St. James', 1121; St. 
John's, Free, 750; St. Luke's, Germantown, 822; St. 
Luke and The Epiphany, 1302; St. Luke's, Kensing- 
ton, 1002; St. Matthew's, 1029; St. Mark's, Frank- 
ford, 1702; St. Mark's, Sixteenth and Locust, 12 14; 
St. Peter's, 962; St. Simeon's, 2000; St. Timothy's, 
Roxborough, 701; The Saviour, 1348. 

There is, lastly, the possible objection that the 
adoption of this principle would tend to the padding 
of the communicant lists. This could all be taken 



242 PAPERS AND ESSAYS FOR CHURCHMEN 

care of by canon. As a matter of fact, it is already 
provided for in the provisions of Canon 13, *' Of 
Parochial Registers and Reports." All that v^ould 
be needed would be a strict enforcement of that law. 
I have read, not all the literature upon this subject, 
to be sure ; but some of the literature, I think, upon 
all the points that have been raised in objection, and 
that in the discussion of the subject as it has been 
waged in half a dozen dioceses. I can find no argu- 
ments against the method proposed that are, to my 
mind, of weight. And I can find abundant weight 
of argument in its favor. 



THE END 



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